Recent developments of ketene dithioacetal chemistry

Ketene dithioacetals are versatile intermediates in organic synthesis. Extensive research, since the last decade, has given rise to new prospects in their chemistry. The objective of this review is twofold: first, to highlight the new prospects in the chemistry of functionalized ketene dithioacetals, and second, to provide an intrinsic link between ketene dithioacetal groups and a variety of other functional groups, which has brought out many new facts that will assist in future designs.

3-Substituted prolines: from synthesis to structural applications, from peptides to foldamers

Among the twenty natural proteinogenic amino acids, proline is unique as its secondary amine forms a tertiary amide when incorporated into biopolymers, thus preventing hydrogen bond formation. Despite the lack of hydrogen bonds and thanks to conformational restriction of flexibility linked to the pyrrolidine ring, proline is able to stabilize peptide secondary structures such as β-turns or polyproline helices. These unique conformational properties have aroused a great interest in the development of proline analogues. Among them, proline chimeras are tools combining the proline restriction of flexibility together with the information brought by natural amino acids side chains. This review will focus on the chemical syntheses of 3-substituted proline chimeras of potential use for peptide syntheses and as potential use as tools for SAR studies of biologically active peptides and the development of secondary structure mimetics. Their influence on peptide structure will be briefly described.

Amino-zinc-enolate carbometalation reactions: application to ring closure of terminally substituted olefin for the asymmetric synthesis of cis- and trans-3-prolinoleucine

The amino-zinc-enolate cyclization reaction is a straightforward route for the synthesis of 3-substituted prolines. As classical intramolecular carbometalation reactions, the applicability of the addition of zinc to a double bond was limited to a substrate in which the terminal alkene carbon was unsubstituted. Being interested in the synthesis of cis- and trans-3-prolinoleucine derivatives for our structure-activity relation (SAR) studies, we focused our effort on the preparation of these compounds by amino-zinc-enolate cyclization of terminally substituted double bonds. Herein we report that the attachment of an activating group such as cyclopropyl to the terminal olefin carbon allows the amino-zinc-enolate cyclization of a terminally substituted alkene. The reaction is stereospecific, leading to a trans-3-substituted proline derivative, whereas a cis stereochemistry was observed with the amino-zinc-enolate cyclization of terminally nonsubstituted olefins. Absolute configurations obtained for the 3-prolinoleucine were established by X-ray analysis, NMR, and optical activity comparison of the cis and trans derivatives obtained by an unambiguous pathway.