Hamari’s Contribution to the Asymmetric Synthesis of Tailor-Made Amino Acids

This article reviews the development of the asymmetric synthesis of tailor-made amino acids conducted at Hamari Chemicals during the 10-year period 2013–2022.The discussion is based on strategies such as direct chiral modification of unprotected amino acids via intermediate formation of Ni(II) complexes and elaboration of chiral nucleophilic or electrophilic glycine equivalents. The former approach includes, for example, second-order asymmetric transformation, dynamic kinetic resolution, and inversion of chirality while the latter approach involves construction of the desired amino acid architecture using, for example, alkylation, aldol, Mannich, or Michael addition reactions as well as multistep procedures. Operational convenience, scalability, and practicality of the developed methods are emphasized.