Asymmetric Assembly of All-Carbon Tertiary/Quaternary Nonadjacent Stereocenters through Organocatalytic Conjugate Addition of α-Cyanoacetates to a Methacrylate Equivalent

An efficient, highly diastereo- and enantioselective assembly of acyclic carbonyl fragments possessing nonadjacent all-carbon tertiary/quaternary stereoarrays is reported based on a Bronsted base catalyzed Michael addition/α-protonation sequence involving α-cyanoacetates and 2,4-dimethyl-4-hydroxypenten-3-one as novel methacrylate equivalent.