The self-regeneration of stereocenters via stereolabile axially-chiral intermediates (SRSvSACI) is a synthetic strategy in which the configuration of a starting material, possessing only a single stereocenter, directs the formation of a chiral axis in an intermediate. The reaction proceeds stereospecifically, although the original stereocenter is destroyed through trigonalization. This is due to the stereochemical information encoded in the chiral axis, which is transformed into the configuration of a stereocenter in the product. In this research, we investigate the generation of axially chiral intermediates arising from both (S)-methyl lactate derivatives and 1,4-benzodiazepin-2,5-dione derivatives. For the deprotonation/alkylation of O-Bn and O-TBS substituted (S)-methyl lactate derivatives containing achiral oxazolidinones, we hypothesized that a twisted amide enolate featuring a chiral C(O-)-N axis could sufficiently impart stereochemical information and control the selectivity of the reaction. Previous work completed by Kobayashi showed in related compounds (E)- vs (Z)-enolate formation could be controlled through the identity of the 2'-oxygen substituent with –Bn affording the (E)-enolate and –TBS affording the (Z)-enolate. We investigated the utilization of achiral oxazolidinone moieties to selectively generate axial chiral intermediates that could then control the facial selectivity of sequential alkylations. Unfortunately, unforeseen synthetic difficulties prevented successful accomplishment of our project goals. We also utilized axially chiral intermediates in the generation of 3,3-disubstituted quinolone-2,4-diones. The target compounds serve as potentially useful drug scaffolds, yet synthetic access to them has remained limited due to the lack of commercial availability of the corresponding enantiopure quaternary substituted amino acids. Prior work in the Carlier group demonstrated the preferential (M)-conformer deprotonation demonstrated by 1,4-benzodiazepin-2,5-diones, and through the installation of an N4-tert-butyloxycarbonyl protecting group, we were able to take advantage of this preferential (M)-conformer deprotonation and generate 3,3-disubstituted quinolone-2,5-diones through an acyl-amino variant of the Chan rearrangement. In general, these reactions were highly enantioselective proceeding with little to no loss of enantiomeric excess. Finally, we collaborated with Professor Bloomquist to test the topical toxicity of selected ring-contracted products against adult Anopheles gambiae, the African vector of malaria. / Ph. D.

Memory of chirality (MOC) is an emerging strategy in asymmetric synthesis. It has been applied to enolate chemistry, reactions involving carbocation intermediates, and to radical systems. In this strategy the chirality of an enantiopure reactant is transferred to the dynamic chirality of a reactive intermediate to produce stereospecific product. 1,4-Benzodiazepin-2-ones have been described as a "privileged" structure in medicinal chemistry. In addition to their uses as anxiolytics (Valium ®) and anti-epileptic agents (Clonopin ®), they have shown activity as HIV Tat antagonist, ras farnesyltransferase inhibitors in cancer cells, and antiarrhythmic agents. Because of the utility of this scaffold in the area of medicinal chemistry, it has served as a template in libraries for tens of thousands of compounds. Despite the vast diversity of 1,4-benzodiazepin-2-ones, there are few routes to enantiomerically enriched 3,3-disubstituted benzodiazepines containing a "quaternary" stereogenic center. This research will discuss the stereochemical properties of 1,4-benzodiazepin-2-ones, and provide a novel approach to synthesize enantiomerically enriched "quaternary" benzodiazepines with stereogenic centers through MOC, without the use of external chiral sources. / Ph. D.

Les acides α-aminés quaternaires permettent l’accès à des structures et dérivés peptidiques présentant des propriétés biologiques intéressantes. De nombreuses voies de synthèses asymétriques sont décrites dans la littérature. La voie de synthèse la plus utilisée est l’alkylation d’acides α-aminés tertiaires. Dans les versions énantioselectives décrites, peu utilisent la chiralité initiale des acides α-aminés tertiaires comme inducteurs de chiralité. La mémoire de chiralité est un des principes permettant l’accès à des acides α-aminés quaternaires énantioenrichis avec, comme unique source de chiralité, la chiralité initiale centrale des acides α-aminés tertiaires. Les objectifs de cette thèse sont de développer de nouveaux procédés pour la synthèse d’acides α-aminés quaternaires par mémoire de chiralité. Deux axes principaux ont été étudiés : 1) Le couplage oxydant d’énolates par mémoire de chiralité permettant l’accès à de nouveaux acides α-aminés quaternaires. 2) L’alkylation par mémoire de chiralité dans des microréacteurs basés sur l’adaptation en flux continu des travaux antérieurs du laboratoire ce qui permet la synthèse reproductible d’une quantité plus importante d’acides α-aminés quaternaires. Ces deux axes ont été étudiés afin d’améliorer la stratégie de synthèse d’acides α-aminés par mémoire de chiralité précédemment développée au laboratoire. / Quaternary α-amino acids allow access to molecular structures and peptides derivatives with interesting biological activites. Many asymmetric synthesis are described in the literature. The most common one is the alkylation of tertiary α-amino acids. Only few methods use the chirality of the starting material as a chiral inductor. Among them, Memory of Chirality is one strategy allowing the access to enantioenriched quaternary α-amino acids using, as a unique source of chirality, the central initial chirality of tertiary α-amino acids. The objective of this PhD is the investigation of new methods for the quaternary α-amino acid synthesis by Memory of Chirality. Two main axes have been studied: 1) Oxidative heterocoupling of enolates by Memory of Chirality that allow access to new enantioenriched quaternary α-amino acids. 2) Alkylation by Memory of Chirality using a microflow system with the objective to adapt in continuous flow the previous works performed in our laboratory. That would allow the reproductible and scalable synthesis of enantioenriched quaternary α-amino acids. This two axes enable the improvement of the synthesis of quaternary α-amino acid synthesis by Memory of Chirality strategy previously developed in our laboratory.

Numerous previous studies of GABAAR ligands have suggested that GABAAR agonists must be zwitterionic and feature an intercharge separation similar to that of GABA (approx. 4.7-6.0 Ã ). We have demonstrated that monomeric, homodimeric and heterodimeric non-zwitterionic GABA amides are partial, full, or superagonists at the murine GABAA receptor (GABAAR). The agonism of these GABA amides is comparable to that of THIP, as shown by in vitro assay results. The assay data indicate that the agonism of GABA amides is tether length-dependent. Optimum agonism is achieved with a tether length of four methylenes in GABA amide dimers and in GABA amides bearing pendant amide or amino groups. We have further investigated the structure-activity relationship for GABA amides on the GABAAR by performing structural modifications to both the superagonist 2c and the agonist 6c. Synergism and [3H]muscimol binding experiments show that 2c binds to the same sites as GABA. Structural modification of 2c demonstrated that partial rigidification of the tether eliminated agonism and caused ligands to behave as weak competitive antagonists. We have also investigated the agonism of four ZAPA derivatives in 36Cl- uptake functional assay. Two of them are found to be as potent as GABA. In our studies of 1,4-benzodiazepines, our goal was to synthesize three different subtypes of quaternary 1,4-benzodiazepines by use of the memory of chirality (MOC) strategy. Disappointingly, most of the deprotonation/alkylations failed, due to various reasons. The failure of the reactions of (S)-alanine-derived tetrahydro-1,4-benzodiazepin-3-ones was probably due to either the unexpected side reactions or the steric hindrance of enolate alkylation. In the case of tetrahydro-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-ones, computational studies suggested that steric hindrance by both the benzo ring and N4-allyl group might retard deprotonation at C3 by bulky bases like KHMDS or LDA. Finally, (S)-serine-derived 1,4-benzodiazepin-2-ones and their elimination products (ï ¡-methylene benzodiazepines) were prepared. These proved unreactive towards deprotonation/alkylations and conjugate additions, respectively. The low reactivity of the ï ¡-methylene benzodiazepines towards nucleophiles was attributed to highly delocalized LUMOs that failed to direct nucleophiles to the ï ¢-carbons. / Ph. D.

Memory of chirality (MOC) is an emerging strategy for asymmetric synthesis which relies upon the intermediacy of transiently non-racemic reactive species. In these reactions the configuration of the sole stereogenic center of the enantiopure starting material is "memorized" by a chiral non-racemic conformation in the intermediate; trapping then captures the stereochemical information, and generates a new stereogenic center with high fidelity. We experimentally and computationally studied the highly retentive deprotonation/alkylations of 1,4-benzodiazepin-2-ones (BZDs) that rely upon this strategy. We captured a transiently non-racemic BZD enolate intermediate in enantiopure form, then released the enolate and observed its subsequent reaction. This approach allowed the first ever step-wise observation of the stereochemical course of such a MOC process. Approximately 2 million deaths are caused by malaria every year in the world. In total roughly 3.2 billion people are living under the risk of malaria transmission. Current use of anticholinesterase insecticides has been limited by their toxicity to human beings. A major African malaria insect vector, Anopheles gambiae (Ag), was targeted. Based on sequence alignment and homology models of AgAChE, a strategy of dual-site binding was adopted that targets Trp84 in the active site and Cys286 at the peripheral site. Selective AChE inhibitors have been designed and synthesized. / Ph. D.

Bivalent drug design is an efficient strategy for increasing potency and selectivity of many drugs. We devised a strategy to prepare agonist-benzodiazepine heterodimers that could simultaneously bind to agonist and BZD sites of the GABAAR. We synthesized a benzodiazepine-MPEG model compound that relied on physiological GABA to elicit flux. We established that a tether at the N1 position of the BZD would not prevent binding to the receptor. However, coupling of GABA amides with long chain PEG tethers studied by another group member resulted in complete loss of agonist activity. We therefore ceased research in this particular area. 1,4-Benzodiazepin-2,5-diones display a wide range of pharmacological activities. Compounds containing the tricyclic proline-derived subtype have received attention as potent anxiolytic agents and as starting materials for anthramycin-inspired anticancer agents. More recently enantiopure (S)-proline-derived 1,4-benzodiazepin-2,5-diones have been recognized as selective α5 GABAA receptor ligands. Despite the impressive diversity of 1,4-benzodiazepine-2,5-diones prepared to date, enantiopure examples possessing a quaternary stereogenic center have been largely unexplored. "Memory of chirality" (MOC) is an emerging strategy for asymmetric synthesis. This technique enables the memory of a sole chiral center in the substrate to be retained in a process that destroys that center. We have used this technique to prepare a library of quaternary proline-derived, thioproline-derived and hydroxyproline-derived 1,4-benzodiazepin-2,5-diones, in high ee. We have developed an efficient synthetic method for preparing oxaproline-derived 1,4-benzodiazepin-2,5-diones in high yields, and by applying the MOC strategy we have prepared quaternary derivatives in acceptable %ee. We envision oxaproline-derived 1,4-benzodiazepin-2,5-diones may exhibit similar or more potent pharmacological properties than proline-derived 1,4-benzodiazepin-2,5-diones. Using density functional theory (DFT) methods, we modeled the formation of an enantiopure, dynamically chiral enolate intermediate and the slow racemization of the enolate on the alkylation reaction time scale. / Ph. D.

Cationâ Ï interaction is an important determinant in protein structure and function. Among the three proteinogenic aromatic amino acids, tryptophan (Trp) is the strongest cationâ Ï donor. We reported the asymmetric syntheses of tryptophan regioisomers in which the amino acid side chain is attached at different position of the indole moiety. These new tryptophan regioisomers can effect a different mode of cationâ Ï interaction. In nature, dramatic increases in binding affinity can be achieved through multivalent binding. Following a fragmentation-dimerization approach, we synthesized Taxol-based dimer in which the baccatin III core of Taxol is coupled with flexible PEG linker. However, microtubule assembly assay suggested that these new dimers are not capable of effecting bivalent binding to the Taxol binding sites in microtubules. Memory of chirality (MOC) is an emerging theme in asymmetric synthesis in which the dynamic chirality of the reactive intermediate "memorizes" the static chirality of the reactant. Using dynamic 1D and 2D NMR and density functional theory (DFT) methods, we studied the MOC effect of 1,4-benzodiazepin-2-ones. Reconstruction of the reaction pathway using DFT calculations supported our proposed contra steric, retention of configuration mechanism. / Ph. D.

Les acides α-aminés non protéinogènes sont des composés riches d’applications et peuvent donner accès à des composés possédant des propriétés biologiques intéressantes ou à des analogues de peptides. Ainsi, de nombreuses méthodes de synthèse asymétrique ont été développées. Parmi celles-ci, seulement quelques méthodes utilisent la chiralité d’acides α -aminés tertiaires naturels pour accéder à des acides α -aminés quaternaires et il n’existe que peu de synthèses asymétriques absolues d’acides α -aminés tertiaires.Notre équipe a précédemment développé une méthode de synthèse d’acides α-aminés quaternaires reposant sur le concept de la mémoire de chiralité. Cette méthode utilise la chiralité axiale d’amides aromatiques tertiaires pour l’alkylation stéréoselective d’énolates d’acides aminés. Lors de ma thèse, nous avons souhaité appliquer cette méthode d’alkylation stéréosélective d’énolate à d’autres types de réaction tels que la réaction d’aldolisation (utilisant un aldéhyde comme électrophile, et dans ce cas il est nécessaire de contrôler un second centre asymétrique), la réaction d’arylation (utilisant un sel de diaryliodonium comme électrophile) ou à la synthèse totale des composés biologiques intéressants. Des résultats préliminaires encourageants obtenus dans des réactions d’aldolisation (dans le cas avec du benzaldéhyde), d’arylation ainsi que dans la synthèse du précurseur de la L-Méthyl DOPA seront présentés.D’autre part, nous exposerons également la stratégie de synthèse des dérivés d’acides α-aminés tertiaires et des aminoalcools, qui utilise le concept de la chiralité gelée. Cette méthode repose sur l’emploi de la chiralité axiale dynamique des amides aromatiques tertiaires, qui est gelée dans un cristal chiral, et une réaction d’alkylation stéréosélective d’énolate conduisant à des acides aminés énantiomériquement enrichis. En effet, en partant de la glycine, nous avons réussi à trouver un composé de départ qui cristallise dans un groupe d’espace chiral, qui donne donc des cristaux chiraux après la cristallisation. Après avoir trouvé des conditions optimales pour la réaction d’allylation, plusieurs autres électrophiles ont été employés avec succès. Les produits alkylés sont obtenus avec des rendements allant jusqu’à 80% et des excès énantiomériques allant jusqu’à 96% sans utiliser d’autre source de chiralité externe que celle du cristal. L’ouverture de ces composés conduit à la formation des acides α-aminés tertiaires énantiomériquement enrichis. Il s’agit donc d’une synthèse asymétrique absolue d’acides α-aminés. / Non proteinogenic α-amino acids can lead to compounds which exhibit interesting biological properties, or peptides analogues. Numerous methods for asymmetric synthesis of these compounds have been developed. However, few examples have used the chirality of natural tertiary α-amino acids for the synthesis of quaternary α-amino acids, and few examples of asymmetric absolute synthesis to access to tertiary α -amino acids have been described so far. Our research group has previously developed a synthesis of enantioenriched quaternary α-amino acids, based on memory of chirality and using the axial chirality of tertiary aromatic amides for stereoselective alkylation of an enolate of an amino acid.This thesis focuses on expending this methodology to other type of reactions, for example, aldolisation reactions (using an aldehyde as electrophile, in this case it is necessary to control the second asymmetric center), arylation reactions (using a diaryliodonium salt as electrophile) or to the the total synthesis of compounds exhibiting interesting biological properties. Herein, we will show our preliminary results in aldolisation reactions (with benzaldehyde), in arylation reactions and also in the total synthesis of L-Methyl DOPA.On the other hand, we will also present an enantioselective synthesis of tertiary α-amino acids derivatives and of amino alcohols based on the principle of frozen chirality. The strategy uses the dynamic axial chirality of tertiary aromatic amides, which is frozen in chiral crystal, and a stereoselective alkylation reaction of enolate leads to enantioenriched α-amino acids. A compound synthesized from glycine has been finally selected to optimise the asymmetric allylation reaction. These optimales conditions were then successfully employed with various electrophiles. Alkylated products were obtained in yield up to 80% and enantiomeric excesses up to 96% using only chirality of crystal. The deprotection of alkylated products leads to the formation of enantienriched α-amino acids.

La synthèse asymétrique d’aza-hétérocycles (tétrahydro-isoquinoléines et naphtodiazépines) a été réalisée grâce à la mise en œuvre d’un processus faisant intervenir des réactions radicalaires et polaires en cascade à partir des ènediynes portant un centre stéréogène. Ce processus implique successivement : la formation d’un ényne-allène (via une migration-1,3 de proton, une réaction d’un alcyne terminal avec un carbénoïde de cuivre, ou encore une réaction d’homologation de Crabbé)/ la cyclisation de Saito-Myers/ le transfert-1,5 d’un atome d’hydrogène/ la recombinaison du biradical résultant. Les deux dernières étapes élémentaires de ce réarrangement étaient idéalement adaptées à l’application d’une stratégie basée sur le phénomène de mémoire de chiralité. Des études mécanistiques basées sur des expériences de marquage isotopique et des calculs théoriques ont permis de mieux comprendre les paramètres qui contrôlent la régio- et la stéréosélectivité de la réaction. L’ambition de contrôler par cette voie, via une double mémoire de chiralité, deux centres stéréogènes nous a conduits à étudier le transfert de la chiralité axiale d’un motif allénique judicieusement substitué. Cette étude a permis de découvrir une cycloisomérisation originale catalysée par le cuivre (I) conduisant à des fulvènes chiraux via un double transfert de chiralité (centrique-axial-centrique). / The asymmetric synthesis of azaheterocycles (tetrahydorisoquinolines and naphthodiazepines) was successfully achieved via the polar/radical cross-over rearrangement of enediynes bearing a stereogenic center. This process involves successively : enyne-allene formation (via 1,3-proton shift, reaction of a terminal alkyne group with carbenoids or Crabbé homologation)/Saito-Myers cyclization/1,5-hydrogen atom transfer/biradical recombination. It was ideally suited to apply a strategy based on the memory of chirality phenomenon. Mechanistic studies based on isotopic labelling and theoretical calculations enabled to go deeper into the understanding of the parameters controlling the regio- and the stereoselectivity of the reaction. The ambition to control two stereogenic centers via double memory of chirality, led us to investigate the transfer of the axial chirality of a designed allenic moiety. This study led to the discovery of an original copper (I)-mediated cycloisomerization leading to chiral fulvenes and proceeding via central-to-axial-to-central double chirality transfer.