Abstract:
Conduritols and their derivatives act as inhibitors of glycosidases and are synthetic intermediates for the preparation of inositols which themselves have various biological functions. Myo-inositol phosphates play an important role in cell signalling as second messengers, and glycanphosphatidylinositol(GPI)-anchors - glycophospholipids which attach proteins to eucaryontic cell membranes - also contain a myo-inositol phosphate. The myo-inositol derivatives needed for chemical GPI-anchor synthesis are available only in poor yields so far. In this work a practical route is described for the preparation of a wide variety of enantiomerically pure conduritol B derivatives which contain different protecting groups. The potential of this approach was demonstrated by the use of both chemical and chemoenzymatical methods, in which Lipozym®, an immobilized Lipase from fungus mucor miehei turned out to be a universal biocatalyst for kinetic racemic resolutions as well as regioselective acylating or deacylating steps, respectively. The conduritol B derivatives can be transferred into the corresponding myo-inositol derivatives by simple cis-dihydroxylation of the double bond, the derived myo-inositol derivatives can than be used for the preparation of GPI-anchors.
In the second part of this work, 1,4,9,12-Tetraoxa-dispiro[4.2.4.2]tetradeca-6,13-diene was used as starting material for the synthesis of a variety of racemic and enantiomerically pure conduritol C and D derivatives containing different protecting groups. Key step during this approach was an anhydrous iron(III) chloride catalyzed solvent-free cleavage of only one acetal function. The MICHAEL-systems derived by this method are valuable synthetic intermediates themselves. 1,4,9,12-Tetraoxa-dispiro[4.2.4.2]tetradeca-6,13-diene was also epoxidized, the product was converted into the corresponding monoacetal by treatment with mineral acid either without cleavage of the second acetal function nor opening of the epoxide ring. This led to a synthetic intermediate with a multitude of functional groups being an interesting tool for subsequent reactions.