Pilot Study to Quantify Palladium Impurities in Lead-like Compounds Following Commonly Used Purification Techniques.

Palladium-catalyzed reactions are among the most commonly used procedures in organic synthesis. The products have a range of uses, including as intermediates in total synthesis and as screening compounds for drug discovery or agrochemical projects. Despite the known and potentially deleterious effects of low-level metal impurities in biological assays, the quantification of metal remaining in reaction products to verify the effective removal of the transition element is rarely reported. Using palladium as an exemplar, we describe a pilot study that for the first time quantifies residual metal levels in reaction products following increasingly rigorous purification protocols. Our results demonstrate that significant levels of residual palladium can remain in isolated reaction products following chromatographic purification, and only by using a subsequent metal scavenging step are they reliably reduced to a low level. Finally, we provide a set of simple guidelines that should minimize the potential for issues associated with residual palladium in reaction products.

Asymmetric Syntheses of 3-Deoxy-3-aminosphingoid Bases: Approaches Based on Parallel Kinetic Resolution and Double Asymmetric Induction.

The asymmetric syntheses of a range of N- and O-protected 3-deoxy-3-aminosphingoid bases have been achieved using two complementary approaches. dl-Serine was converted to a racemic N,N-dibenzyl-protected γ-amino-α,ß-unsaturated ester which was resolved using a parallel kinetic resolution (PKR) strategy upon reaction with a pseudoenantiomeric mixture of lithium (R)-N-benzyl-N-(α-methylbenzyl)amide and lithium (S)-N-3,4-dimethoxybenzyl-N-(α-methylbenzyl)amide, giving the corresponding enantio- and diastereoisomerically pure ß,γ-diamino esters. Alternatively, elaboration of l-serine gave the corresponding enantiopure N,N-dibenzyl-protected γ-amino-α,ß-unsaturated ester, and doubly diastereoselective conjugate addition of the antipodes of lithium N-benzyl-N-(α-methylbenzyl)amide was found to proceed under the dominant stereocontrol of the lithium amide reagent in both cases, thus augmenting the accessible range of ß,γ-diamino esters. Both of these protocols were expanded to include in situ oxidation of the enolate formed upon conjugate addition, giving access to the corresponding α-hydroxy-ß,γ-diamino esters. Elaboration of these ß,γ-diamino and α-hydroxy-ß,γ-diamino esters gave the protected forms of the 3-deoxy-3-aminosphingoid base targets.