All of us are
aware of the sharp increase in demand for enantiomerically pure reagents and
products that has transpired over the past twenty-five years or so. To some extent,
the move in this direction has been brought on by the quest by synthetic
organic chemists for optically pure natural product targets and for effective
asymmetric catalysts. More significantly, this activity has been spurred on
throughout the world by governmental oversight agencies whose responsibility it
is to guarantee the availability of pure drugs for human consumption. As a
consequence, the international medicinal chemistry community continues to
upgrade its search for economic ways to develop chiral technology. The need for
chiral, nonracemic raw materials, intermediates, and bioactive end products
continues to grow at a rapid rate. In the light of these developments, this
seemed an appropriate time for assembly into a single volume of a compilation
listing many of the optically active reagents and catalysts in use at the
present time.
The selection
covered in this volume comes from two sources. The first is the Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis (EROS) which was published
in 1995. In the intervening time, new entries have been written by many experts
in the field for incorporation into the ever-expanding electronic version of
the same work (e-EROS). As to
be expected, the compilation includes both well recognized and lesser known
reagents and ligands. In order to assist the researcher searching for relevant
information, this Introduction
is followed by a listing of Recent
Reviews and Monographs on subjects related to this general theme.
Following that, there is a section that illustrates those procedures appearing
in volumes 68-78 of Organic Syntheses that
feature the detailed preparation of enantiomerically enriched end-products. The
overall intent is to assemble in manageable format as much indispensable
information dealing with the subject of Chiral
Reagents for Asymmetric Synthesis as
possible. To this end, the entries are grouped into the following categories:
alcohols, aldehydes, amides and lactams, amino compounds, carbohydrate
derivatives, diols, esters and lactones, heterocycles, ketones, sulfur
compounds, phosphines, and miscellaneous.
In the majority
of cases, asymmetric reactions are involved. Enantioselective applications of
transition metal catalysts can be found throughout the volume. In the body of
the text, no attempt has been made to group the reagents in other than
alphabetical order. The benefit derived from scanning its pages is thereby
maximized.
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