Paper
Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry
has been undertaken to optimise the key step, eventually
achieving the formation of the two contiguous stereocentres of
the target molecule with good enantiocontrol. The present
work demonstrates the utility of this asymmetric methodology
for the preparation of bioactive molecules bearing an α-amino-
β-hydroxy motif.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the EPSRC (leadership
fellowship to D.J.D. and postdoctoral fellowship to P.J.) and
the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European
Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (A.F., FP7/2007-2013,
REA grant agreement no. 316955).
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Notes and references
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15 The preparation of isocyanoacetates 7a–f from commercial
reagents over three steps is detailed in the ESI.†
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11 R. de la Campa, I. Ortín and D. J. Dixon, Angew. Chem., Int. 16 Removal of 4 Å molecular sieves had no detrimental effect
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on the reaction.
12 For racemic syntheses of chloramphenicol see: 17 The observed slight upgrade in e.e. between 9 and 1 is
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linked to the chromatographic purification process.
Org. Biomol. Chem.
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