Enantioenriched 1,2-amino alcohols are key motifs in biologically active compounds and invaluable chiral synthons. Despite significant advances in relevant preparations, there is still a scarcity of modular and enantioconvergent methods for the synthesis of chiral vicinal amino alcohols from readily available precursors. Herein, we describe a Ni-catalyzed enantioconvergent decarboxylative arylation, leveraging racemic serine- and isoserine-derived redox-active esters (RAEs) as coupling partners. These RAEs serve as inexpensive, bench-stable, and readily available alkyl radical precursors. This protocol offers a robust, divergent, and versatile catalytic platform, enabling the construction of enantioenriched α- and β-arylated vicinal amino alcohols. It features high modularity, exceptional functional group tolerance, a broad substrate scope, and precise stereocontrol under mild conditions. Its utility is demonstrated through the successful late-stage functionalization of complex bioactive molecules, offering a streamlined route to a diverse array of novel analogues from a valuable scaffold.
Quan et al. (Fri,) studied this question.