Tandem metal-mediated synthesis

This is the final report of a one-year, Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Boronic acids RB(OH){sub 2} are currently of interest for applications involving molecular recognition such as amine and sugar sensors and selective transport of biomolecules. They have also been shown to be powerful enzyme inhibitors and alpha-aminoboronic acids (ABAs) are particularly selective inhibitors of serine proteases. Unfortunately, current multistep synthetic routes to the latter compounds do not allow for the incorporation of a wide variety of organic substituents R that may lead to new, more selective enzyme inhibitors. In this work the author describes several direct routes to ABAs based on metal-catalyzed addition of diboron compounds to imines and nitriles. Several other applications of diboron additions to heteroatom-containing unsaturated organics are also described