Peptide Deravatives as New Chiral Ligands for Enantioselective Phenylacetylene Addition to Aldehydes

The asymmetric addition of alkynylzinc to aldehydes is an important method of synthesizing chiral propargyl alcohols, which are important precursors to many chiral organic compounds. Recently, many significant chiral ligands in this area have been disclosed.[1] Use of a short peptide as a catalyst would allow expansion beyond the (still uncharted) repertoire of single amino acids, while conserving the advantages of a small molecule catalyst. To the best of our knowledge,no results of peptide derivatives as chiral ligands in this reaction has been disclosed to date.[2] Herein, we report the initial results of peptide derivatives, which have been used directly as a chiral ligand in this reaction (Scheme 1).……