Dipeptide-Derived Multifunctional Quaternary Phosphonium Salt Catalyzed Asymmetric Cyclizations via a Tandem Michael Addition/SN2 Sequence

A novel family of dipeptide-based multifunctional quaternary phosphonium salts has been developed as chiral phase-transfer catalysts, which feature ready accessibility and structure modularity, allowing easy fine-tunings of activity. They demonstrated high efficiency in catalyzing the tandem asymmetric Michael addition/intramolecular S(N)2 reaction between 6 or 7-substituted conjugate enones and malonates, providing synthetically important five or six-membered carbocycles and heterocycles in good yields and with good to excellent enantioselectivities.