Three aldehydes each with a quaternary carbon stereocentre bearing an alkenyl, a phenyl, and a methyl ester group were treated with N-methylhydroxylamine. In each case bicyclic isoxazolidine products were formed by condensation to give intermediate nitrones that undergo intramolecular dipolar cycloaddition. The stereoselectivity was influenced by the -carbonyl substituent, possibly by a hydrogen bond between CO and a nearby CH of the nitrone in the transition state (supported by DFT and X-ray studies), and the regioselectivity was affected by the length of the tether and by the presence of an ester on the alkene dipolarophile.Key words: Cycloaddition; Diastereoselectivity; Domino reaction; Fused-ring systems; Heterocycles.Intramolecular dipolar cycloaddition reactions of nitrones have been known for more than 50 years. 1 One of the attractions of this chemistry is that it allows the rapid synthesis of cyclic and polycyclic compounds with 1,3-amino-alcohol functionality. The presence of polycyclic amines in alkaloids has prompted a considerable number of studies into intramolecular nitrone cycloadditions, 2 including work in our own research group. 3 Many alkaloids contain not just an amino group but an aromatic ring, often derived from a -arylethylamine precursor. Not surprisingly, therefore, there are reports of the intramolecular cycloadditions of nitrones bearing an aromatic substituent attached to the nitrogen atom. 4,5 Of these examples, as far as we are aware, only one uses a quaternary aldehyde (compound 1) which was heated with N-methylhydroxylamine hydrochloride salt and pyridine to give the cycloadduct 2 as a single stereoisomer (Scheme 1). 4a We were interested in exploring further examples of this type of reaction of quaternary substituted aldehydes and report here our findings.
Scheme 1 Related literature example. 4aIn related synthetic chemistry efforts, we wanted to test nitrone cycloadditions derived from aldehydes with an -quaternary stereocentre bearing an aryl group and an ester group. We therefore prepared the aldehyde 6 by double alkylation of the ester 3 followed by Swern oxidation 6 (Scheme 2).
Scheme 2 Cycloaddition with aldehyde 6.Heating the aldehyde 6 with N-methylhydroxylamine hydrochloride salt and diisopropylethylamine in toluene gave a mixture of the cycloadducts 7a and 7b in a 1:1.6 ratio. The structures of both cycloadducts were determined by single crystal X-ray analysis (see Supporting Information, SI). This reaction is a direct comparison with the formation of the cycloadduct 2, where a single stereoisomer was reported. This suggests that, although a phenyl group has a stronger preference for the exo position than a methyl group, there is a preference for a methyl ester, rather than a phenyl group, to be exo. A possible reason for this is evident in the X-ray crystal structure of 7b (Fig. 1), in which the preference for this isomer might arise from a favorable interaction between the ester carbonyl oxygen atom and the proton at the ring junction to the nitr...