Vicinal difluorination as a C=C surrogate: an analog of piperine with enhanced solubility, photostability, and acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity

• Yuvixza Lizarme-Salas,
• Alexandra Daryl Ariawan,
• Ranjala Ratnayake,
• Hendrik Luesch,
• Angela Finch and
• Luke Hunter

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2020, 16, 2663–2670, doi:10.3762/bjoc.16.216

• us to propose the hypothetical analog 2 (Figure 1) as a potential mimic of 1. The analog 2 contains a saturated alkyl chain with two vicinal C–F bonds in the α/β positions relative to the amide moiety. The presence of a vicinal difluoride moiety within an alkyl chain is known to favour rotamers in

The synthesis of the 2,3-difluorobutan-1,4-diol diastereomers

• Robert Szpera,
• Nadia Kovalenko,
• Kalaiselvi Natarajan,
• Nina Paillard and
• Bruno Linclau

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2017, 13, 2883–2887, doi:10.3762/bjoc.13.280

• opening; fluorinated building block; vicinal difluoride; Introduction The introduction of fluorine in organic compounds usually results in the modification of a range of chemical, physical and biological properties [1]. Fluorine incorporation is therefore a common strategy to optimise the properties of

• blocks do not contain stereogenic C–F bonds. The vicinal-difluoride motif is known to exert conformational control through the fluorine gauche effect [14][15], and so building blocks containing this motif are of interest [16][17]. We have previously reported on the gram-scale synthesis of meso-2,3

• -difluorobutane-1,4-diol (anti-5) starting from commercially available cis-but-2-ene-1,4-diol (Scheme 1) [17]. The vicinal-difluoride group was introduced by a two-step sequence, with initial nucleophilic epoxide [18] opening by a fluoride source [19], followed by nucleophilic deoxyfluorination [9][10][11]. In

Synthesis and crystallographic analysis of meso-2,3-difluoro-1,4-butanediol and meso-1,4-dibenzyloxy-2,3-difluorobutane

• Bruno Linclau,
• Leo Leung,
• Jean Nonnenmacher and
• Graham Tizzard

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2010, 6, No. 62, doi:10.3762/bjoc.6.62

• analysis of the diol and the corresponding benzyl ether reveals an anti conformation of the vicinal difluoride moiety. Monosilylation of the diol is high-yielding but all attempts to achieve chain extension through addition of alkyl Grignard and acetylide nucleophiles failed. Keywords: building block

• ; epoxide opening; gauche effect; organofluorine; vicinal difluoride; Introduction Selective fluorination of bioactive compounds is a widely employed strategy for the modification of their properties [1]. Fluorine atoms can be introduced to modulate the pKa of adjacent acidic and basic functional groups as

• imaging using 18F [4], and modification of high-performance materials [5]. In recent years, the vicinal difluoride motif has received increasing attention due to the conformational properties instilled by the ‘gauche effect’ [6], which results in the vicinal difluoro gauche conformation being more stable