[Efficient chiral control based on five-membered heterocyclic and related systems].

The synthetic potential of some simple five-membered heterocycles, including 2-oxazolone, 1,3-dihydro-2-imidazolone and 2-thiazolone as building blocks for chiral polyfunctional compounds as well as chiral heterocyclic auxiliaries for asymmetric synthesis is reviewed. The stereodefined introduction of easily replaceable groups to the 4,5-olefinic moiety of the 2-oxazolone ring to give versatile chiral synthons, followed by stereospecific and stepwise substitution, provides a working and versatile strategy for achieving a chiral synthesis, which leads to the preparation of a wide variety of 2-amino alcohols of biological interest. Sterically constrained chiral 2-oxazolidinones and the derived conformationally rigid amino alcohols, which are derived from cycloaddition reactions of the 2-oxazolone to cyclic dienes such as 9,10-dimethylanthracene and hexamethylcyclopentadiene, represent excellent chiral auxiliaries and chiral ligands which are of general use in asymmetric synthesis. The strategy developed using 2-oxazolone can also be used in the cases of the structurally similar 1,3-dihydro-2-imidazolone and 2-thiazolone derivatives.