Avaliação do potencial eletrofílico de azalactonas frente à nucleófilos, via catálise por ácido de Brønsted

Abstract

Azlactones are basically protected amino acids which can be used in the synthesis of natural and synthetic products. Despite of being excellent pro-nucleophiles, their structures have two electrophilic sites which could be involved in reactions in the presence of nucleophiles. In this work, azlactone ring opening reactions catalyzed by a Brønsted acid, camphorsulfonic acid (CSA), are described. First we prepared azlactone rings in two steps, amidation using benzoyl chloride in basic conditions following by intramolecular ciclization using EDC. Azlactones were isolated with good to excellent yields (82-98%). The optimized reaction condition consists in the use of 10 mol% of camphorsulfonic acid as catalyst, dichloromethane as solvent, at room temperature without stirring. Next, the scope of various azlactones and nucleophiles were evaluated. Chemical yields were good to excellent, and even by using high sterically bulky substrates such as tert-butanol, leads to the product with a good yield (57%). All synthesized compounds were fully characterized by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, IR and HRMS. Finally, we turned our attention to understand the reaction mechanism. The study by ESI-MS revealed the catalyst participates in the catalytic cycle as a proton donor in a previous step to nucleophilic attack, thereby contributing for a decreased energy system.