Small chiral molecules are very important building blocks in the synthesis of biologically active compounds. These building blocks include nitrogen and oxygen-containing heterocycles such as 2-oxazolidinones, 1,3-oxazinan-2-ones, 2-oxazolines, oxazines, morpholine and morpholinones. Because of their interesting properties, chiral heterocycles have stirred great interest in the synthetic chemist community to develop useful and efficient strategies to these molecules. In this dissertation, the design and syntheses of various heterocyclic building blocks are presented, as well as the testing of their biological activities as antibacterial. Another very interesting family of heterocycle-containing molecules are the Aeruginosins. They are a family of marine natural products isolated from a blue-green algae, which display inhibitory activity against serine proteases such as thrombin, trypsin, and factor VIIa. Most aeruginosins contain an heterocyclic moiety called the 2-carboxy-6-hydroxyoctahydroindole (Choi) ring; this Choi moiety is a rigid bicyclic unnatural amino acid and is the core structure in the aeruginosins, indispensable to their biological activity. A synthesis of a ring-oxygenated variant of the Choi from D-mannose is reported in this dissertation. The ring-oxygenated variant of 2-carboxy-6-hydroxyoctahydroindole can potentially be used as a surrogate of Choi in the design and synthesis of aeruginosin-based thrombin inhibitors.

Conformationally constrained bicyclic amino acids are invaluable in the synthesis of natural products and peptidomimetics. Aeruginosins contain novel bicyclic amino acid, 2--‐carboxy--‐6--‐hydroxyl octahydrindole (Choi) as the core structure. Aeruginosins are tetra peptide serine protease inhibitors isolated from marine sponges and cyanobacterial water blooms. Rigid bicyclic amino acid(Choi)is an essential core structure, which strongly influences biological activity of aeruginosin family members. Aeruginosins showed promising inhibitory activity against thrombin, trypsin, and factor VIIa. Thrombin and factor VIIa play a major role in blood clotting cascade; excessive coagulation leads to thrombosis and other cardiovascular diseases. Several research groups have reported a number of synthetic aeruginosin analogs. In this thesis, some of the synthetic methodologies of bicyclic amino acid core of aeruginosins are presented. Importance of bicyclic amino acids in peptidomimetic synthesis and drug designing is presented. Mainly, syntheses of ring oxygenated Choi analogs starting from glucose and mannose are presented.

La fonctionnalisation de liaisons C-H réputées peu réactives ouvre de nouvelles perspectives en synthèse organique. La catalyse par un métal de transition comme le palladium représente une solution particulièrement efficace à ce problème. Les travaux de thèse présentés dans ce mémoire s’inscrivent dans ce contexte. Dans un premier temps, la réaction étudiée, catalysée par le palladium, a visé à étendre une méthodologie mise au point au laboratoire pour la synthèse de carbocycles et d’hétérocycles à cinq chaînons par activation intramoléculaire de liaisons C(sp3)-H à partir de chlorures d’aryles. Ces derniers sont en effet plus disponibles et moins onéreux que les bromures d’aryle correspondants. Des études d’optimisation ont été effectuées pour la mise au point d'une réaction diastéréosélective et régiosélective. Plusieurs substrats ont été synthétisés pour être ensuite placés dans les conditions optimales de la réaction d’activation C(sp3)-H, et ont conduit à une grande diversité de cycles à cinq chaînons fusionnés. Dans un deuxième temps, nos travaux ont consisté à étendre l’activation C(sp3)-H pallado-catalysée à des précurseurs non aromatiques cycliques ou acycliques. Pour des raisons d'accessibilité, nos études se sont alors portées sur la préparation de bromures vinyliques azotés pouvant conduire après activation C-H à des motifs hexahydroindoles ou pyrrolidines. De nouvelles conditions d’activation CH ont alors été trouvées pour cette famille de substrats, et ont conduit aux hétérocycles cibles de manière diastéréosélective et régiosélective. Après extension de la réaction à divers précurseurs, nous nous sommes intéressés à la synthèse d’un intermédiaire poly-fonctionnalisé permettant d'accéder aux aéruginosines, famille de produits naturels bioactifs. / The direct functionalization of unactivated C-H bonds represents an atom- and step-economical alternative to more traditional synthetic methods based on functional group transformation, which often require multi-step sequences. In particular, transition-metal catalysis has recently emerged as a owerful tool to functionalize otherwise unreactive C-H bonds. In this context, we first investigated the extension of a methodology that has been developed in our laboratory for the synthesis of fused five-membered rings via palladium-catalyzed C(sp3)-H activation from aryl chlorides. Optimization studies were conducted and reaction conditions leading to a regioand diastereoselective process were found. These optimal conditions were applied to various ubstrates, giving rise to a variety of fused five-membered carbocycles and heterocycles. Next, our work was devoted to the extension of the palladium-catalyzed C(sp3)-H activation to cyclic and acyclic non aromatic precursors. Our studies focused on the preparation of the more accessible nitrogen-containing bromoalkene substrates, leading to interesting hexahydroindole or pyrrolidine motifs by C-H activation. New C-H activation conditions were adapted to this family of substrates and led to the synthesis of the target heterocycles in a regio- and diastereoselective manner. As a more complex application of this method, we investigated the synthesis of a polyfunctionalized intermediate allowing the access to the aeruginosin family of bioactive natural products.