Pure and Applied Chemistry

Abstract: Rhodium-catalyzed enantioselective hydroacylation reactions allow rapid access to chiral substituted ketones. However, due to the low reactivity of disubstituted alkenes in intermolecular versions of this process, only a small number of asymmetric intermolecular reactions have been described. Strategies employed to avoid reactivity issues include the use of norbornadienes, linear dienes, acrylamides, and allenes as the alkene components. In addition, our laboratory has recently reported the rhodium-catalyzed enantioselective inter-molecular alkyne hydroacylation reaction, leading to the formation of enone products via a kinetic resolution procedure.