A regio- and stereodivergent route to all isomers of vic-amino alcohols

Vicinal amino alcohols are substructures in several important natural products. They are also frequently employed ligands in asymmetric synthesis. Many enantioselective syntheses of vic-amino alcohols have been reported, but each structure has required its own synthetic route. This study presents a synthetic strategy leading to all eight possible isomers of a given beta-amino alcohol, starting from vinyl epoxides. The developed strategy focuses on the propensity of vinyl epoxides and vinylaziridines to be selectively ring-opened at the allylic position by suitable hard nucleophiles. Within this strategy, a novel large-scale aminolysis reaction and the synthesis of a trisubstituted N-H vinylaziridine are detailed.