A designed amide as an aldol donor in the direct catalytic asymmetric aldol reaction.

The direct catalytic asymmetric aldol reaction offers efficient access to β-hydroxy carbonyl entities. Described is a robust direct catalytic asymmetric aldol reaction of α-sulfanyl 7-azaindolinylamide, thus affording both aromatic and aliphatic β-hydroxy amides with high ee values. The design of this transformation features a cooperative interplay of a soft and a hard Lewis acid, which together facilitate the challenging chemoselective enolization by a hard Brønsted base.