Yoshiji Takemoto

Hydrogen-bonding interaction plays a crucial role in the molecular recognition and activation processes of various biologically important reactions that are mediated by enzymes and antibodies in living organisms. Recently, it has been shown that a hydrogen-bonding donor can be used as a general acid catalyst for various types of reactions in organic chemistry. In this article, we describe enantioselective reactions catalyzed by urea and thiourea derivatives as general acid catalysts as well as d

We have developed several multifunctional thiourea catalysts bearing a tertiary amine or an 1,2-amino alcohol in expectation of their synchronous activation of a nucleophile and an electrophile through both acid-base and hydrogen-bonding interactions. From these studies, it was revealed that the weak acidity of thioureas compared with metallic Lewis acids could be overcome by this modification. The bifunctional aminothiourea could be used efficiently for a wide range of diastereoselective and en

Hydrogen-bond (HB)-donor catalysts that bear a 2-aminoquinazolin-4-(1H)-one or a 3-aminobenzothiadiazine-1,1-dioxide skeleton have been developed, and it has been shown that these catalyst motifs act similarly to other HB-donor catalysts such as thioureas. The highly enantioselective hydrazination of 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds was realized even at room temperature with up to 96% ee for 2-aminoquinazolin-4-(1H)-one-type catalysts, which were more effective than the corresponding urea and thiourea c

The NHC-catalyzed thioesterification of aromatic or aliphatic aldehydes with a range of thiols was developed in the presence of a stoichiometric amount of an organic oxidant. Among the oxidants examined, phenazine was shown to give the best results in terms of chemical yield and compatibility with thiols.

The umpolung alkylation of silyl enol ethers with an iodonium(III) ylide proceeds under mild conditions to afford various 1,4-dicarbonyl compounds in high yields in the presence of a halogen-bonding catalyst. Unlike typical transition-metal activation processes of such ylide precursors, which tend to proceed via carbenoid intermediates, experimental and computational studies indicate that halogen bonding (XB) between the XB donor catalyst and the iodonium ylide plays a crucial role in promoting

Carboxylic acids and their corresponding carboxylate anions are generally utilized as Brønsted acids/bases and oxygen nucleophiles in organic synthesis. However, a few asymmetric reactions have used carboxylic acids as electrophiles. Although chiral thioureas bearing both arylboronic acid and tertiary amine were found to promote the aza-Michael addition of BnONH₂ to α,β-unsaturated carboxylic acids with moderate to good enantioselectivities, the reaction mechanism remains to be clarif