Multi-step synthesis strategies towards 1,2-amino alcohols with special emphasis on phenylpropanolamines

Chiral vicinal amino alcohols are molecules with broad applications in the pharmaceutical as well as in the chemical industry. Due to their high potential, various multi-step chemical, chemo-enzymatic and enzymatic reaction synthesis strategies have been developed within the last decades. This review summarises the asymmetric synthetic routes towards vicinal amino alcohols in general and provides exemplary in-depth looks into multi-step phenylpropanolamine synthesis with special focus on recently published cascade approaches. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.