Concise asymmetric synthesis of (+)-CP-99,994 and (+)-L-733,060 via efficient construction of homochiral syn-1,2-diamines and syn-1,2-amino alcohols.

An efficient asymmetric synthesis of human NK-1 SP receptor antagonists (+)-CP-99,994 and (+)-L-733,060 was achieved starting from a common chiral intermediate (5). Our route featured the SmI2-induced reductive coupling of N-tert-butanesulfinyl imine (7) with aldehyde (6) as the key step as well as pivotal transformations of the anti-1,2-amino alcohol thus obtained to homochiral syn-1,2-amino alcohol and syn-1,2-diamine for the asymmetric synthesis of 2,3-disubstituted piperidines.