MeSI-promoted chemoselective deacetylation: a general and mild protocol.

A MeSI-mediated simple and efficient protocol for the chemoselective deprotection of acetyl groups has been developed employing KMnO as an additive. This chemoselective deacetylation is amenable to a wide range of substrates, tolerating diverse and sensitive functional groups in carbohydrates, amino acids, natural products, heterocycles, and general scaffolds. The protocol is attractive because it uses an environmentally benign reagent system to perform quantitative and clean transformations under ambient conditions.