Construction of Quaternary Stereocenters by Palladium‐Catalyzed Carbopalladation‐Initiated Cascade Reactions

The enantioselective synthesis of molecules containing quaternary stereocenters is a field of intense research interest and development. Among the known organic transformations, carbopalladation‐initiated domino transformations constitutes a general method for the construction of compounds containing cyclic or spiro quaternary stereocenters. In this Minireview, recent achievements in palladium‐catalyzed domino Heck/C?H functionalizations and developments in enantioselective carbopalladation‐initiated domino processes are summarized.     

Chiral Organocatalysts in Enantioselective CO2 Utilization Reactions

The development of efficient CO₂ utilization reactions has gained a significant amount of attention in recent years. Although transformations of CO₂ to produce basic chemicals have been extensively investigated, the development of catalytic enantioselective CO₂ utilization reactions for the preparation of fine chemicals remains limited at this stage. Several excellent methods for catalytic enantioselective CO₂ utilization using chiral metal complex catalysts have been reported. Many researchers have also focused on developing organocatalyzed approaches to enantioselective CO₂ utilization, and several excellent examples have appeared in recent years. Herein, recent advances in catalytic enantioselective CO₂ utilization reactions using chiral organocatalysts are reviewed to provide a forecast for organocatalyzed enantioselective CO₂ utilization research.     

Enantioselective Carbonyl Catalysis Enabled by Chiral Aldehydes

Organocatalytic methods have achieved spectacular advancements for the preparation of chiral molecules in highly enantioenriched forms. The fast development of this field can mainly be attributed to the evolution of general and reliable activation modes. The discovery and identification of new activation modes are therefore highly desirable to push the boundaries of asymmetric reactions. In this Minireview, recent advances in enantioselective carbonyl catalysis, one useful subbranch of organocatalysis for the efficient activation of simple amines, will be summarized. With elegantly designed chiral aldehyde catalysts, highly enantioselective and efficient asymmetric reactions can be developed. Continued development of enantioselective carbonyl catalysis is expected in the future.     

Organocatalytic Desymmetrization Reactions for the Synthesis of Axially Chiral Compounds

The enantioselective synthesis of atropisomers is an emerging field, that in recent years reached fundamental results and put the bases for innovative applications. Organocatalysis is playing a central role in the realization of original synthesis for novel atropisomeric scaffolds.^[1] In this short review, we would like to highlight the results obtained by our group and others in the field of axially enantioselective desymmetrization reactions using organocatalysis as main strategy.     

Recent Advances in Asymmetric Catalysis Using p-Block Elements

The development of new methods for enantioselective reactions that generate stereogenic centres within molecules are a cornerstone of organic synthesis. Typically, metal catalysts bearing chiral ligands as well as chiral organocatalysts have been employed for the enantioselective synthesis of organic compounds. In this review, we highlight the recent advances in main group catalysis for enantioselective reactions using the p-block elements (boron, aluminium, phosphorus, bismuth) as a complementary and sustainable approach to generate chiral molecules. Several of these catalysts benefit in terms of high abundance, low toxicity, high selectivity, and excellent reactivity. This minireview summarises the utilisation of chiral p-block element catalysts for asymmetric reactions to generate value-added compounds.     

催化不对称Friedel-Crafts反应

傅-克反应是有机化学中最基本的反应之一,但是对于催化的不对称傅-克反应的研究则处于起步阶段。最近这方面的研究获得了突破,本文简要介绍了催化不对称傅-克反应的最新动态,包括各种手性Lewis酸催化体系的开发及其在不对称合成中的应用。     

对映选择性亲电氟化反应研究进展

含氟有机化合物, 特别是手性氟化物在医药、农药及功能性材料等相关领域的作用备受注目. 尽管在分子中有立体选择性地引入一个氟原子一直是有机化学家面临的一个挑战性问题, 近年来在化学家们的不断努力下, 对映选择性氟化反应研究取得重要进展. 高光学活性的手性氟化物可通过手性亲电氟化试剂诱导的立体选择性氟化反应, 基于底物的手性氟化反应以及手性催化剂诱导的不对称催化氟化反应等来制备. 特别是, 手性金属配合物和有机催化剂诱导的不对称催化氟化反应被广泛应用于各类手性氟化物的合成, 已成为不对称氟化反应研究的热点. 全面介绍对映选择性亲电氟化反应研究概况和最新进展, 讨论各种不对称氟化反应的特点及应用范围.     

Metal‐Catalyzed Substrate‐Directed Enantioselective Functionalization of Unactivated Alkenes

Alkenes are versatile compounds that are available on large scales in industry or through chemical synthesis. Selective functionalization of unactivated alkenes in a chemo‐, regio‐, diastereo‐ and enantioselective fashion is a highly sought‐after goal in organic synthesis. Substrate‐directed enantioselective functionalization of unactivated alkenes provides an important strategy to achieve this goal. Using a functional group on the alkene substrate as a native coordinating group, a two‐point binding mode of the substrate to the metal center enables effective control of regio‐, diastereo‐ and enantioselectivities. Through this strategy, a variety of enantioselective functionalization methods have been developed recently. The recent advances in this area are highlighted here.     

Recent Advances in Continuous-Flow Enantioselective Catalysis

The increased demand for more efficient, safe, and green production in fine chemical and pharmaceutical industry calls for the development of continuous-flow manufacturing, and for chiral chemicals in particular, enantioselective catalytic processes. In recent years, this emerging direction has received considerable attention and has seen rapid progress. In most cases, catalytic enantioselective flow processes using homogeneous, heterogeneous, or enzymatic catalysts have shown significant advantages over the conventional batch mode, such as shortened reaction times, lower catalysts loadings, and higher selectivities in addition to the normal merits of non-enantioselective flow operations. In this Minireview, the advancements, key strategies, methods, and technologies developed the last six years as well as remaining challenges are summarized.     

Chiral Phosphoric Acid Creates Promising Opportunities for Enantioselective Photoredox Catalysis

In recent years,visible light driven enantioselective chemical transformations have emerged as new additions to the toolkit of synthetic chemists to accomplish more efficient assembly of chiral molecules.Nonetheless,implementing precise stereocontrol on photoinduced intermolecular radical coupling process remai ns arduous.     

Enantioselective chromatography as a powerful alternative for the preparation of drug enantiomers

The preparative separation of enantiomers by chromatography on chiral stationary phases (CSPs) has been recognized as being a useful alternative to the more conventional approaches such as enantioselective synthesis and enzymatically catalyzed transformations. The possible contribution of enantioselective chromatography with respect to the preparation of enantiomerically pure compounds is reviewed in the context of the competitive approaches and depending on the application scale, with a special emphasis on the recent progresses achieved in this particular field of separation.     

Recent developments in asymmetric multicomponent reactions

Multicomponent reactions (MCRs) receive increasing attention because they address both diversity and complexity in organic synthesis. Thus, in principle diverse sets of relatively complex structures can be generated from simple starting materials in a single reaction step. The ever increasing need for optically pure compounds for pharmaceutical and agricultural applications as well as for catalysis promotes the development of asymmetric multicomponent reactions. In recent years, asymmetric multicomponent reactions have been applied to the total synthesis of various enantiopure natural products and commercial drugs, reducing the number of required reaction steps significantly. Although many developments in diastereoselective MCRs have been reported, the field of catalytic enantioselective MCRs has just started to blossom. This critical review describes developments in both diastereoselective and catalytic enantioselective multicomponent reactions since 2004. Significantly broadened scopes, new techniques, more environmentally benign methods and entirely novel MCRs reflect the increasingly inventive paths that synthetic chemist follow in this field. Until recently, enantioselective transition metal-catalyzed MCRs represented the majority of catalytic enantioselective MCRs. However, metal contamination is highly undesirable for drug synthesis. The emergence of organocatalysis greatly influences the quest for new asymmetric MCRs.     

Efficient Enantioselective Syntheses of Chiral Natural Products Facilitated by Ligand Design

The employment of enantioselective transition‐metal‐catalyzed transformations as key steps in asymmetric natural product syntheses have attracted considerable attention in recent years owing to their versatile synthetic utilities, mild conditions and high efficiency in chirality generation. The chiral catalysts or supporting ligands are believed to be crucial for the requisite reactivity and enantioselectivity. Therefore, the rational design of chiral ligands is at the heart of developing new asymmetric transition‐metal catalyzed reactions and provides an avenue to the asymmetric synthesis of natural products. Our group has been engaged in the development of transition‐metal‐catalyzed enantioselective cross‐coupling, cyclization and other related reactions and the application of these methodologies to natural product syntheses. In this account, we summarized our recent synthetic efforts towards the efficient total syntheses of several different types of natural products including terpenes, alkaloids and polyketides facilitated by the design of a series of versatile P‐chiral phosphorous ligands.     

A one-pot catalysis: the strategic classification with some recent examples

In this "Emerging Area", the strategic classification of one-pot catalysis, i.e. cooperative, relay and sequential catalysis, is described. In order to illustrate this classification, we take the readers through a series of recent examples which utilize either metal-metal, metal-organo and organo-organo catalysts. The compilation clearly demonstrates the explosive growth and power of this field, which has become, in the last few years, an important technique particularly in the case of enantioselective catalysis.     

Enantioselective ultra high performance liquid and supercritical fluid chromatography: The race to the shortest chromatogram

The ever‐increasing need for enantiomerically pure chiral compounds has greatly expanded the number of enantioselective separation methods available for the precise and accurate measurements of the enantiomeric purity. The introduction of chiral stationary phases for liquid chromatography in the last decades has revolutionized the routine methods to determine enantiomeric purity of chiral drugs, agrochemicals, fragrances, and in general of organic and organometallic compounds. In recent years, additional efforts have been placed on faster, enantioselective analytical methods capable to fulfill the high throughput requirements of modern screening procedures. Efforts in this field, capitalizing on improved chromatographic particle technology and dedicated instrumentation, have led to highly efficient separations that are routinely completed on the seconds time scale. An overview of the recent achievements in the field of ultra‐high‐resolution chromatography on column packed with chiral stationary phases, both based on sub‐2 μm fully porous and sub‐3 μm superficially porous particles, will be given, with an emphasis on very recent studies on ultrafast chiral separations.     

New approaches to enantioselective fluorination: Cinchona alkaloids combinations and chiral ligands/metal complexes

The selective construction of carbon-fluorine bonds is of great interest to medicinal chemists because the replacement of a hydrogen or an oxygen atom with a fluorine atom in biologically active molecules can confer the molecules with improved physicochemical properties and biological activities. Since the first discovery of enantioselective fluorination using N-fluorocamphorsultam, our synthetic interest had been focused on the development of chiral N-fluorosulfonamide derivatives capable of enantioselective fluorination. However, these initial efforts revealed several limitations in both chemical yields and enantioselectivities of the fluorinated products. We present here the background of our personal story of the enantioselective fluorination reaction and some successful applications of the methods to the design and synthesis of biologically active products. Two novel approaches using cinchona alkaloid/Selectfluor^® combinations and chiral ligands/metal complexes have been pursued, respectively. In addition, the recent advances in this area by other groups are also described briefly.     

Artificial metalloenzymes: proteins as hosts for enantioselective catalysis

Enantioselective catalysis is one of the most efficient ways to synthesize high-added-value enantiomerically pure organic compounds. As the subtle details which govern enantioselection cannot be reliably predicted or computed, catalysis relies more and more on a combinatorial approach. Biocatalysis offers an attractive, and often complementary, alternative for the synthesis of enantiopure products. From a combinatorial perspective, the potential of directed evolution techniques in optimizing an enzyme's selectivity is unrivaled. In this review, attention is focused on the construction of artificial metalloenzymes for enantioselective catalytic applications. Such systems are shown to combine properties of both homogeneous and enzymatic kingdoms. This review also includes our recent research results and implications in the development of new semisynthetic metalloproteins for the enantioselective hydrogenation of N-protected dehydro-amino acids.     

Chiral recognition applications of molecularly imprinted polymers: a critical review

Molecular imprinting technology offers the unique opportunity to tailor chiral stationary phases with predefined chiral recognition properties by employing the enantiomers of interest as binding-site-forming templates. Added advantages, such as ease of preparation, chemical robustness, low-cost production, and the possibility of shaping molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) in various self-supporting formats, render them attractive materials for a broad range of chiral recognition applications. In this review a critical overview on recent developments in the field of MIP-based chiral recognition applications is given, focusing on separation techniques and molecular sensing. Inherent limitations associated with the use of enantioselective MIP materials in high-performance separation techniques are outlined, including binding site heterogeneity and slow mass transfer characteristics. The prospects of MIP materials as versatile recognition elements for the design of enantioselective sensor systems are highlighted.     

Enantioselective C−H Functionalization Reactions under Gold Catalysis

Transition metal-catalyzed enantioselective functionalization of ubiquitous C−H bonds has proven to be promising field as it offers the construction of chiral molecular complexity in a step- and atom-economical manner. In recent years, gold has emerged as an attractive contender for catalyzing such reactions. The unique reactivities and selectivities offered by gold catalysts have been exploited to access numerous asymmetric transformations based on gold-catalyzed C−H functionalization processes. Herein, this review critically highlights the major advances and discoveries made in the enantioselective C−H functionalization under gold catalysis which is accompanied by mechanistic insights at appropriate places.     

Organocatalysed asymmetric Mannich reactions

The asymmetric Mannich reaction ranks among the most potent enantioselective and diastereoselective C-C-bond forming reactions. In recent years, organocatalysed versions of asymmetric Mannich processes have been increasingly reported and used in a rapidly growing number of applications. This tutorial review provides an overview of the recent history of the asymmetric organocatalysed Mannich reaction, including scope and limitations, and application of different catalyst systems.