Estudies of enantioselective synthesis of natural lignan-lactones

Author(s)

Erika Soares Bronze Uhle

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Ribeirão Preto.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC)
• Defense date: 2007-06-22

Examining board members

Paulo Marcos Donate; Timothy John Brocksom; Arlene Goncalves Correa; Gino Del Ponte; Luiz Fernando da Silva Junior

• Advisor: Paulo Marcos Donate

Abstract

Natural lignans have several types of structures exhibiting a wide variety of biological activities. Natural lignan-lactones, such as arctigenin (1) and the podofilotoxin derivatives (2), are well known for their cytotoxic activities, and both their anti-cancer and anti-HIV properties have attracted much research interest in the last decades. Although numerous racemic syntheses and several examples of the asymmetric synthesis of these compounds have been largely employed, they are not useful for the large-scale preparation of optically pure compounds because stoichiometric amounts of chiral sources and/or la long sequence of synthetic reaction steps are necessary for their accomplishment. A more efficient method for the enantioselective synthesis of these natural products uses asymmetric catalysis with prochiral substances as starting materials. Previous works developed at our laboratory have employed some synthetic methods described in the literature to investigate the synthesis of some natural products. However, these methods involve several synthetic steps and lead to low yields. These facts have thus stimulated us to develop an alternative method for the obtention of biologically active natural lignan-lactones such as parabenzlactone (51) and oxo-parabenzlactone (52). Besides their useful biological properties, these compounds can also be transformed into other interesting natural products, such as aryltetralin, dibenzylbutyrolactone, and furofuran lignans. Protected derivatives of 3-hydroxymethyl-?-butyrolactone (50) were used as the starting materials of this new methodology. These derivatives were synthesized using the enantioselective hydrogenation of the unsaturated material produced from 3,3-dimethylacrylic acid (81). Enantioselective hydrogenation studies were performed using rhodium and ruthenium chiral catalysts Several butenolides derivatives were studied aiming at the obtention of a satisfactory yield of the enantioselective intermediate (50). The catalytic hydrogenation of these butenolide derivatives with rhodium and ruthenium chiral complexes showed that chelation of the substrate with the metallic center of the asymmetric catalyst strongly depends on the substituent attached to the butenolide skeleton. The hydrogenation products were obtained with a large range of optical purity (2-100% ee), depending on the substituent type. These results indicate that the presence of protective groups in the allylic hydroxyl function has a strong effect on the asymmetric hydrogenation reaction of the studied butenolides. Some computer simulations were performed in order to investigate the mechanism of substrate complexation with the chiral catalyst. [(S)-(?)-2,2?-bis-(diphenylphosphino)-1,1?-binaphtyl]chloro(p-cymene) chloride ruthenium was the chiral catalyst and 3-hydroxymethylbutenolide derivatives were used as substrates. The computer simulation results obtained to date have shown that when there is more than one point of complexation between the metallic center of the chiral catalyst and the unsaturated substrate, the activation energy of the key intermediate is lowered, thus enhancing the catalytic activity and resulting in high stereoselectivity. Once the enantioselective hydrogenation studies were concluded, we pursued the synthesis of natural products from one of the racemic derivatives, the one containing a methoxymethylether as protective group. Once the intermediate aldehyde 87 is obtained, a large number of interesting natural products could be synthesized. New methodologies are now under investigation in order to obtain aldehyde 87, which is difficult to achieve due to its low stability, as described in the literature. (AU)