Two complementary sets of conditions for radical additions of thiols to terminal ynamides are described. The use of 1 equiv of thiol affords the cis-β-thioenamide adducts in rapid fashion (10 min) and good dr, whereas employing excess thiol and longer reaction times favors the trans products.Ynamides are a class of compounds that have gained prominence in recent years. 1 They are electron-rich alkynes, 2 although their nucleophilicity can be tuned by varying the nature of the N-acyl group. Malacria has demonstrated the utility of ynamides as radical acceptors. 3,4 We reasoned that they should react readily with thiyl radicals, which are electrophilic in nature. 5 A recent report by Yorimitsu and Oshima detailing radical additions of arenethiols to internal tosylynamides 6 lent support to this hypothesis.The addition of a thiyl radical to an ynamide produces a β-thioenamide. This moiety is present in unusual cyclic peptides such as thioviridamide 7 (Figure 1) and the lantibiotics. 8 Inspired by the striking architecture of these natural products, we investigated additions of thiyl radicals to terminal ynamides. Herein, we report the initial results of our study, which demonstrate that both cis and trans β-thioenamides can be obtained selectively by simply varying the reaction conditions.The proposed reaction is shown in Figure 2. Regioselective addition of a thiyl radical to the terminal carbon of ynamide A would provide vinyl radicals B and/or C. These intermediates would rapidly equilibrate, and hydrogen atom abstraction from the thiol by the less hindered radical C, according to the precedent of Montevecchi and co-workers, 9 should afford cis-β-thioenamide D as the kinetic product. In contrast, known methods of β-thioenamide construction based on imine acylation 10 or Pummerer rearrangement 11 chemistry deliver predominantly the trans isomers. We also recognized that the presence of excess thiol in the reaction mixture would permit isomerization of D to the thermodynamically more stable trans isomer via a radical addition-β-thiyl radical elimination pathway. 12 Accordingly, we pursued a stereoselective synthesis of both cis-and trans-β-thioenamides by seeking two complementary sets of reaction conditions. We began by studying the additions of commercially available thiols to simple ynamides. Our results are collected in Table 1. Addition of excess n-butyl thiol (4 equiv) to acyclic amide- derived ynamide 1 13 in refluxing t-BuOH with AIBN as initiator 14 afforded β-thioenamide E-3a as the major product of a separable mixture (72%, 15:1 E:Z) after 3 h. In contrast, employing 1 equiv of thiol and 0.5 equiv of AIBN led to Z-3a in good yield (76%, 1:11 E:Z) after only 10 min. Similar trends were observed with thiophenol, although greater quantities of the E isomer were obtained under both sets of conditions. When the radical addition of tert-butyl thiol to 1 was performed under the Z-selective conditions, no reaction was observed. Subjection of this bulky thiol to the typically E-selective conditions a...