Hydroxamic Acids in Asymmetric Synthesis

Metal-catalyzed stereoselective reactions are a central theme in organic chemistry research. In these reactions, the stereoselection is achieved predominantly by introducing chiral ligands at the metal catalyst's center. For decades, researchers have sought better chiral ligands for asymmetric catalysis and have made great progress. Nevertheless, to achieve optimal stereoselectivity and to catalyze new reactions, new chiral ligands are needed. Because of their high metal affinity, hydroxamic acids play major roles across a broad spectrum of fields from biochemistry to metal extraction. Dr. K. Barry Sharpless first revealed their potential as chiral ligands for asymmetric synthesis in 1977: He published the chiral vanadium-hydroxamic-acid-catalyzed, enantioselective epoxidation of allylic alcohols before his discovery of Sharpless asymmetric epoxidation, which uses the titanium-tartrate complex as the chiral reagent. However, researchers have reported few highly enantioseletive reactions using metal-hydroxamic add as catalysts since then. This Account summarizes our research on metal-catalyzed asymmetric epoxidation using hydroxamic adds as chiral ligands. We designed and synthesized a series of new hydroxamic acids, most notably the C2-symmetric bis-hydroxamic acid (BHA) family. V-BHA-catalyzed epoxidation of allylic and homoallylic alcohols achieved higher activity and stereoselectivity than Sharpless asymmetric epoxidation in many cases. Changing the metal species led to a series of unprecedented asymmetric epoxidation reactions, such as (i) single olefins and sulfides with Mo-BHA, (ii) homoallylic and bishomoallylic alcohols with Zr- and Hf-BHA, and (iii) N-alkenyl sulfonamides and N-sulfonyl imines with Hf-BHA. These reactions produce uniquely functionalized chiral epoxides with good yields and enantioselectivities.