Routine use of natural abundance deuterium NMR in a polypeptidic chiral oriented solvent for the determination of the enantiomeric composition of chiral building blocks

[reaction: see text] Natural abundance deuterium 2D NMR spectroscopy in chiral liquid crystal was successfully used to efficiently analyze the enantiomeric composition of organic chiral building blocks involved in the syntheses of natural and synthetic bioactive products. The results reported here emphasize the high potential of this analytical strategy and prove its applicability for routinely determining enantiomeric excesses.     

Visualization of enantiomers in cholesteric solvents through deuterium NMR

Proton decoupled deuterium NMR of mixtures of enantiomers in homogeneously oriented cholesteric solvents produces simple spectra with linewidths of 10 to 50 Hz in cases where the proton spectra would give second order patterns so complicated as to defy analysis. The chiral solvent orders each of a pair of enantiomers differently which results in a difference in the residual quadrupolar coupling constant yielding well resolved spectra for each enantiomer. That the technique constitutes a new tool for measurement of enantiomeric ratios is illustrated using several chiral benzylic alcohols.     

Enantiomeric recognition of chiral invertomers through NMR in chiral oriented phases: a study of cis-decalin

We describe a deuterium 1D and 2D NMR study of cis-decalin in various chiral and achiral polypeptide oriented solvent systems and the effect of the acquisition temperature. Organic solutions of poly-γ-benzyl-l-glutamate (PBLG) or poly-ε-carbobenzyloxy-l-lysine (PCBLL) in dichloromethane or chloroform allow the chiral invertomers of cis-decalin to be differentiated at low temperature. At high temperature, it is possible to distinguish between deuterium nuclei of the molecule which become enantiotopic under rapid kinetic averaging. The results obtained illustrate the capability of such polypeptide liquid-crystalline solvents to enantioselectively interact with unfunctionalised chiral cycloalkanes and highlight the analytical potential of NMR analysis in chiral liquid crystal based solvents in the investigation of interconverting chiral conformers.     

Determination of absolute configurations of amines and amino acids using nonchiral derivatizing agents (NCDA) and deuterium NMR

Enantiomeric analysis and empirical determination of the absolute configuration of amines and amino acids can be easily performed using acetyl-d(3) chloride as a nonchiral derivatizing agent (deuterium probe) and deuterium NMR in a chiral solvent (Courtieu's method). In the case of amino acids, derivatization to amido esters, performed with methanol-d(4) and acetyl-d(3) chloride, gives a double opportunity for enantiomeric analysis.     

Visualization of enantiomers in cholesteric solvents through deuterium NMR

Abstract

Proton decoupled deuterium NMR of mixtures of enantiomers in homogeneously oriented cholesteric solvents produces simple spectra with linewidths of 10 to 50 Hz in cases where the proton spectra would give second order patterns so complicated as to defy analysis. The chiral solvent orders each of a pair of enantiomers differently which results in a difference in the residual quadrupolar coupling constant yielding well resolved spectra for each enantiomer. That the technique constitutes a new tool for measurement of enantiomeric ratios is illustrated using several chiral benzylic alcohols.     

Sulfated cyclodextrins as water-soluble chiral NMR solvating agents for cationic compounds

The utility of a series of sulfated cyclodextrins as water-soluble chiral NMR solvating agents for cationic substrates is described. Sulfated α-, β- and γ-cyclodextrin with degrees of substitution of 12, 13 and 14, respectively, a sulfated β-cyclodextrin with a degree of substitution of 9 and a sulfobutyl ether β-cyclodextrin with a degree of substitution of 6.3 are examined. Results with 33 water-soluble cationic organic salts are reported. Chiral differentiation with the sulfated cyclodextrins is compared to prior results obtained with anionic carboxymethylated and phosphated cyclodextrins. The highly sulfated cyclodextrins are often more effective at causing enantiomeric differentiation in ¹H NMR spectra than the sulfobutyl ether, carboxymethylated and phosphated cyclodextrins, and are recommended as the first choice of a chiral solvating agent for the analysis of chiral cationic organic salts in aqueous solution.     

Chiral discrimination of aliphatic amines and amino alcohols using NMR spectroscopy

Two methods are compared for analyzing the enantiomeric purity of aliphatic amines and amino alcohols using NMR spectroscopy. The first employs (+)‐(18‐crown‐6)‐2,3,11,12‐tetracarboxylic acid as a chiral NMR solvating agent in methanol‐d₄. The second involves a derivatization scheme in which the amine is reacted with naphtho[2,3‐c]furan‐1,3‐dione to form the corresponding amide. The naphthyl amide is then mixed with a chiral calix[4]resorcinarene in deuterium oxide. The crown ether only produces sufficient enantiomeric discrimination to determine enantiomeric purity for three of the nine substrates studied. The system with the naphthyl amide and a calix[4]resorcinarene produces enantiomeric discrimination of sufficient magnitude to determine enantiomeric purity for all nine substrates. The H1 and H4 resonances of the naphthyl ring are especially suitable to monitor for enantiomeric discrimination. The order of the (R)‐ and (S)‐enantiomers of the H1 and H4 resonances exhibit specific trends for aliphatic amines and amino alcohols that correlate with the absolute configuration. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Automatic assignment of absolute configuration from 1D NMR data

[reaction: see text] Opposite enantiomers exhibit different NMR properties in the presence of an external common chiral element, and a chiral molecule exhibits different NMR properties in the presence of external enantiomeric chiral elements. Automatic prediction of such differences, and comparison with experimental values, leads to the assignment of the absolute configuration. Here two cases are reported, one using a dataset of 80 chiral secondary alcohols esterified with (R)-MTPA and the corresponding (1)H NMR chemical shifts and the other with 94 (13)C NMR chemical shifts of chiral secondary alcohols in two enantiomeric chiral solvents. For the first application, counterpropagation neural networks were trained to predict the sign of the difference between chemical shifts of opposite stereoisomers. The neural networks were trained to process the chirality code of the alcohol as the input, and to give the NMR property as the output. In the second application, similar neural networks were employed, but the property to predict was the difference of chemical shifts in the two enantiomeric solvents. For independent test sets of 20 objects, 100% correct predictions were obtained in both applications concerning the sign of the chemical shifts differences. Additionally, with the second dataset, the difference of chemical shifts in the two enantiomeric solvents was quantitatively predicted, yielding r(2) 0.936 for the test set between the predicted and experimental values.     

Quantitative 1H NMR method for the routine spectroscopic determination of enantiomeric purity of active pharmaceutical ingredients fenfluramine, sertraline, and paroxetine

Determining the enantiomeric purity of chiral therapeutic agents is important in the development of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). A strategy for determining the enantiomeric purity of three APIs was developed using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and the chiral solvating agent (CSA) 1,1-bi-2-naphthyl (1). While chiral chromatography is widely used to evaluate enantiomeric purity, it can sometimes suffer from tedious sample preparation obviating rapid measurements that are sometimes needed during the manufacture of such agents. The techniques described herein provide comparable enantiomeric purity results with those obtained with traditional chiral HPLC and other published methods for these compounds. Chiral analysis of standard samples of methylbenzylamine enantiomeric mixtures using 1 were found to be quantitative to approximately 1% minor enantiomer. Enantiomeric purity determination by NMR utilizing chiral solvating agents do not require special instrumental techniques, chemical derivatization or standards and is therefore ideally suited for rapid routine analysis. As a result, the technique demonstrated is commonly used in our laboratory as a complementary or alternative method to chiral HPLC or optical rotation measurements for routine determination of enantiomeric purity.     

Determination of the enantiomeric excess of ferroelectric liquid crystals derived from three natural amino acids

The synthesis and 1H NMR spectra are presented for diastereoisomeric esters based on chiral alpha-chloro acids which are derived from natural available alpha-amino acids (L-valine, L-leucine and L-isoleucine) and commonly employed for the synthesis of ferroelectric liquid crystals possessing a high spontaneous polarization. Partial racemization is established as occurring within the formation of the chiral alpha-chloro acids and their esterification procedure. The enantiomeric excess exceeds 90% for L-isoleucine and L-valine derivatives, whereas an enantiomeric excess of 60% is found for L-leucine derivatives. On the basis of existing data in the literature, the differences in the spontaneous polarization of these derivatives is discussed with regard to the determined enantiomeric excess and their conformational freedom affecting the average lateral dipole moment of a single molecule.     

核磁共振技术测定联萘酚的对映体纯度

手性联萘酚((±)-BINOL)制备是国内高校常开设的一个实验,其产品的对映体纯度测试是实验的重要一环。以2-甲酰基苯硼酸和(S)-(?)-1-苯乙胺的混合物作为手性试剂与联萘酚发生Bull-James Assembly反应,以此设计了核磁共振氢谱(¹H NMR)测定联萘酚对映体纯度的实验。实验结果表明,通过反应生成的对映体混合物的核磁信号,能准确地计算出(±)-BINOL的对映体纯度。以选定的苯环氢核信号计算出的(R)-BINOL含量与理论ee值有着良好的线性关系(R²=0.9999)。此实验方法能够快速完成大量学生样品的测量,同时大大减少实验废液的产生量。学生通过此实验可对核磁共振技术有更进一步的了解。     

Chiral Control of Gas-Phase Molecules using Microwave Pulses

Microwave three-wave mixing has emerged as a novel approach for studying chiral molecules in the gas phase. This technique employs resonant microwave pulses and is a non-linear and coherent approach. It serves as a robust method to differentiate between the enantiomers of chiral molecules and to determine the enantiomeric excess, even in complex chiral mixtures. Besides such analytical applications, the use of tailored microwave pulses allows us to control and manipulate chirality at the molecular level. Here, an overview of some recent developments in the area of microwave three-wave mixing and its extension to enantiomer-selective population transfer is provided. The latter is an important step towards enantiomer separation—in energy and finally in space. In the last section, we present new experimental results on how to improve enantiomer-selective population transfer to achieve an enantiomeric excess of about 40 % in the rotational level of interest using microwave pulses alone.     

Signal separation and determination of the enantiomeric purity of primary amines with (-)-myrtenal--a 13C NMR study

The applicability of (-)-myrtenal as a chiral derivatizing agent in combination with (13)C NMR spectroscopy was investigated. (13)C NMR was found to be a valuable tool for the identification and enantiomer differentiation of primary amines including beta-amino alcohols and vicinal diamines. The enantiomeric excess could be determined via automated deconvolution and integration, and was found to be in good accordance with the expected values even in the cases, when enantiomer differentiation was not possible in (1)H NMR spectra.     

Achiral deuterated derivatizing agent for enantiomeric analysis of carboxylic acids by NMR in a chiral liquid crystalline solvent

The use of a deuterated ‘probe’ for the enantiomeric analysis of chiral carboxylic acids is proposed. The probe is the perdeuterobenzyl fragment which can be easily attached to the acid and removed from the corresponding ester. The analysis is performed through the measurement of the proton-decoupled deuterium NMR spectrum of the chiral benzyl ester dissolved in poly-γ-benzyl-l-glutamate/dimethylformamide liquid crystal. Enantiomeric discrimination was observed for all the studied compounds on the para and/or α deuterons. There is no need for the deuterons to be located close to the stereogenic centre. Thus enantiomers were correctly distinguished from the signal of a deuterium located 12 bonds away from the asymmetric carbon. The major interest of this general technique is that no kinetic resolution should occur during the derivatization process.     

Helical chirality in hexamethylene triperoxide diamine

The primary explosive hexamethylenetriperoxide diamine has previously been found to exist in the solid state as a racemic mixture of helically chiral, threefold symmetric enantiomers; another enantiomeric pair of low-energy conformers has been predicted, but has never been observed. We show by solution 2D NMR at 14 T, in achiral solution and by addition of chiral shift reagents, that all four optically isomeric conformers coexist at slow equilibrium on the NMR timescale at room temperature, and can be observed. Calculations of the 1H and 13C NMR chemical shifts using gauge-including atomic orbital methods are in excellent agreement with experiment; thermochemical calculation of the free energies in solution are in somewhat worse agreement, but correctly predict the relative stability of the conformers. Analysis of the effects of chiral shift reagents on the NMR spectra suggests that discrimination between chiral isomers is primarily around the molecular equator, around which the enantiomeric gauche O--O linkages are arrayed.     

Fast and high-resolution stereochemical analysis by nonuniform sampling and covariance processing of anisotropic natural abundance 2D 2H NMR datasets

Natural abundance deuterium (NAD) 2D NMR spectroscopy using chiral or achiral liquid crystals is an efficient analytical tool for the stereochemical analysis of enantio- or diastereomers by the virtue of proton-to-deuterium substitution. In particular, it allows the measurement of enantiopurity of organic synthetic molecules or the determination of the natural isotopic (1)H/(2)H fractionation in biological molecules, such as fatty acid methyl esters (FAME). So far, the NAD 2D spectra of solutes were acquired by using uniform sampling (US) and processed by conventional 2D Fourier transform (FT), which could result in long measurement times for medium-sized analytes or low solute concentrations. Herein, we demonstrate that this conventional approach can be advantageously replaced by nonuniform sampling (NUS) processed by covariance (Cov) transform. This original spectral reconstruction provides a significant enhancement of spectral resolution, as well as a reduction of measurement times. The application of Cov to NUS data has required the introduction of a regularization procedure in the time domain for the indirect dimension. The analytical potential of combining Cov and NUS is demonstrated by measuring the enantiomeric excess of a scalemic mixture of 2-ethyloxirane and by determining the diastereomeric excess of methyl vernoleate, a natural FAME. These two organic compounds were aligned in a polypeptide (poly(γ-benzyl-L-glutamate)) mesophase. In the case of NAD 2D NMR spectroscopy, we show that Cov and NUS methods allow a decrease in measurement time by a factor of two compared with Cov applied to US data and a factor of four compared with FT applied to US data.     

Enantiomeric separations by means of nano‐LC

Enantiomers represent a class of compounds extensively investigated since they can show totally different behaviors when they interact with a chiral environment. Because of their identical chemical structure (they differ only in the spatial arrangement of the atoms in the molecule), the separation of optical isomers is a challenging task of analytical chemistry. So far employed methods for the separation of enantiomers are mainly based on chromatography. CE as well was considered as an analytical technique suitable for chiral separations, characterized by high efficiency and low consumption of reagent. Recently, miniaturization was introduced in LC to answer the needs to perform analyses in the minimum time, to use the smallest amount of samples and to reduce environmental pollution. Nano‐LC represents nowadays a valid alternative to the abovementioned conventional analytical techniques, and can be advantageously exploited for enantiomeric separation especially because it needs minute amounts of the chiral material necessary to carry out enantiomeric separations. This review describes the development and applications of nano‐LC in the field of chiral separations. The data reported in literature show its relevance for the study enantiomers‐chiral selectors interaction, as well as for application in pharmaceutical and clinical research.     

Enantiodiscrimination in deuterium NMR spectra of flexible chiral molecules with average axial symmetry dissolved in chiral liquid crystals: the case of tridioxyethylenetriphenylene

Flexible chiral molecules undergoing fast interconversion (on the NMR time scale) between different conformational enantiomers may yield "average" axial species with enantiotopically related sites. Contrary to the situation observed for rigid axial molecules, signals from these enantiotopic sites in NMR spectra recorded in chiral liquid-crystalline solvents can be resolved. In the present work, we studied the deuterium NMR spectra of tridioxyethylenetriphenylene (compound 4) statistically deuterated to 10% in the flexible side chains and dissolved in chiral and achiral lyotropic liquid crystals based on poly(gamma-benzylglutamate). The fast chair-chair flipping of the side chains in 4 on average renders the molecule axially symmetric ( D 3 h ) with pairs of enantiotopic ethylene deuterons. These deuterons exhibit unusually large enantiodiscrimination. To explain this observation, we first describe how the average symmetry of flexible molecules can be derived from the symmetry of the "frozen" conformers and the nature of the averaging process. The procedure is then applied to 4 and used to analyze the NMR results. It is shown that the large enantiodiscrimination in the present case reflects a large difference in the orientational ordering of the conformational enantiomers participating in the interconversion processes as well as a large geometrical factor due to the special shape of the dioxyethylene side groups. (1)H and (13)C NMR spectra of 4 in the same lyotropic liquid crystalline solvent are analyzed to determine its ordering characteristics. Several related cases are also discussed.