Recent developments in the enantioselective deprotonation of prostereogenic substrates by use of substoichiometric quantities of chiral bases are discussed. The effect that reac-The enantioselective deprotonation of prochiral substrates is very well documented. [1] This reaction has been shown to be diverse, and has resulted in the development of efficient methodologies for the synthesis of a wide range of optically active substrates, such as allylic alcohol 1, [2a] substituted silane 2 [2b] and vinyl bromide 3 [2c] (Scheme 1). The majority of reports have dealt with the use of a stoichiometric amount of a chiral base. [1,2] Despite the potential, [3] there are still very few examples of analogous substoichiometrically mediated processes. [4] The concept of substoichiometrically mediated deprotonation is still in its infancy, whereas the related substoichiometrically mediated chiral protonation of prostereogenic substrates is much more mature. [5Ϫ7] This related methodology relies on the initial formation of the corresponding conjugate base, usually an enolate, [5] by MeLi addition to a silyl enol ether, [8a] SmI 2 /allyl iodide addition to a ketene, [8b] or by simple deprotonation. [8c] Addition of a substoichiometric quantity of chiral acid HA* (typically 10 mol %) in the presence of a suitable stoichiometric quantity [a] 393 tion parameters (such as solvent, temperature and additive) have on the stereoselectivity are outlined.Scheme 1. Enantioselective deprotonation mediated by a stoichiometric quantity of chiral base of donor acid HA has resulted in the synthesis of optically active ketones 4 and 5 and amide 6 in good yield (Scheme 2). In many cases, the resulting stereocontrol has been shown to be superb and evidently illustrates the con-