The setereoselective preparation of β-keto esters using baker's yeast in the presence of rice wine koji

Access to Optically Pure β-Hydroxy Esters via Non-Enzymatic Kinetic Resolution by a Planar-Chiral DMAP Catalyst

“…In the recent decades, the development of methods for asymmetric synthesis of organic molecules has gained increasing importance [1]. As a representative example, the development of approaches to achieve optically pure β-hydroxy esters has emerged as an important issue in synthetic organic chemistry [2], since these chiral derivatives have received special attention due to their importance as intermediates in the synthesis of a variety of important chemicals, such as β-lactams, pheromones and carotenoids [3,4]. In addition, β-hydroxy esters are also precursors to norepinephrine or serotonin reuptake inhibitors that are an important class of drugs.…”

“…Several routes to produce optically pure 1,3-hydroxy esters have been explored, including asymmetric aldol reaction [13,14,15,16], the Reformatsky reaction [17,18,19,20,21,22], or regioselective epoxide ring opening [23,24,25,26]. The most widely studied method to achieve this kind of derivatives is asymmetric reduction, using either biocatalysts [4,27,28,29,30] or organometallic complexes [31,32,33,34,35,36] (Scheme 1).…”