Development of Catalytic Asymmetric Acylation of Alcohols in the Presence of a Chiral 1, 2-Diamine

Asymmetric acylation of alcohols is very important in synthetic organic chemistry and holds great potential for the preparation of small chiral compounds which are suited for further manipulation in the synthesis of biologically active natural products. Although enzymatic acylation has been extensively studied and established as a promising method for the preparation of chiral alcohol variants, development of nonenzymatic alternatives in this field has been scattered. From this viewpoint, we wish to demonstrate highly efficient and practical methods for the catalytic asymmetric acylation of racemic secondary alcohols and various meso-diols by the reaction with achiral benzoyl chloride in the presence of a chiral 1, 2-diamine derived from (S) -proline.