Primary secondary alkylpyridinium salts: a comparison under electrochemical and chemical reduction conditions.

This report details a systematic comparison of the scope of aryl bromides in nickel-catalyzed, reductive cross-electrophile couplings of primary secondary alkylpyridinium salts using both electrochemical and chemical reductants. Facilitated by the use of high-throughput experimentation (HTE) techniques, 37 aryl bromides, including 13 complex, drug-like examples, were investigated. By using primary and secondary substrates differing only by one methylene, we observed that the trends in ArBr scope are similar between the primary and secondary alkylpyridinium salts, although distinctions were observed in isolated cases.

Diversifying Amino Acids and Peptides via Deaminative Reductive Cross-Couplings Leveraging High-Throughput Experimentation.

A deaminative reductive coupling of amino acid pyridinium salts with aryl bromides has been developed to enable efficient synthesis of noncanonical amino acids and diversification of peptides. This method transforms natural, commercially available lysine, ornithine, diaminobutanoic acid, and diaminopropanoic acid to aryl alanines and homologated derivatives with varying chain lengths. Attractive features include ability to transverse scales, tolerance of pharma-relevant (hetero)aryls and biorthogonal functional groups, and the applicability beyond monomeric amino acids to short and macrocyclic peptide substrates.