Highly diastereoselective synthesis of the 1,1'-binaphthol unit on a bile acid template

The use of 7-deoxycholic acid as a chiral template in the asymmetric syntheses of 1,1'-binaphthyl-2,2'-diol derivatives is reported. Intramolecular coupling of compounds 7 and 11 have been carried out with Mn(acac)(3) in CH(3)CN to afford coupled binaphthol products 8 and 12 with 65% and >99% diastereoselectivity, respectively. In both cases the predominant formation of the (S) isomers were predicted by computer modeling studies. This was confirmed in the case of compound 12.