Solid-phase reagents for the isolation and protection of carbonyl compounds

Parallel Synthesis of Aldehydes and Ketone Facilitated by a New Solid-Phase Weinreb Amide

This paper describes a novel supported Weinreb amide resin that facilitates parallel synthesis of aldehydes and ketones on a scale useful for chemical library synthesis. This new resin makes it possible to produce custom aldehydes and ketones from a wide range of carboxylic acids, including N-BOC-amino acids. A variety of commercially unavailable aldehydes are easily synthesized in parallel and obtained in high purity via a simple filtration workup, thus facilitating parallel synthesis of lead optimization libraries that typically require custom synthesis of aldehyde intermediates for development of structure-activity relationships. To demonstrate the utility of this method, we synthesized a small library based on a supported Horner-Emmons reagent. This is the first time it has been shown that aldehydes generated via a supported Weinreb amide could be used directly as reagents in chemical library synthesis employing moisture-sensitive reactions. The analogous solution reaction is not suited for parallel synthesis because of the laborious extractive workup procedure necessary and, at times, the instability of these reactive intermediates.

Precursors of the neurosteroids

In addition to the neurosteroids pregnenolone and dehydroepiandrosterone, organic solvent extracts of rat brains contain related compounds that react with various reagents to yield additional amounts of these ketosteroids. Among the chemicals producing these increments are triethylamine, HCl, FeCl3, and Pb(OAc)4. Most revealing is the action of FeSO4 on these extracts. This reducing agent also converts components of the extract into the two neurosteroids, suggesting the presence of sterol hydroperoxides or peroxides in brain. The clues provided by this study indicate that the chemical nature of the steroidal constituents existing in extracts of mammalian brains remains to be determined. It is likely that their association with neurological functions will be better understood when the structures of these substances are established.