Mechanistic Insight Towards Understanding the Role of Charge in Thiourea Organocatalysis

Pyranylation and glycosylation are pivotal for accessing a myriad of natural products, pharmaceuticals, and drug candidates. Catalytic approaches for enabling these transformations are of utmost importance and integral to advancing this area of synthesis. In exploring this chemical space, a combined experimental and computational mechanistic study of pyranylation and 2-deoxygalactosylation catalyzed by a cationic thiourea organocatalyst is reported. To this end, a thiourea-cyclopropenium organocatalyst was employed as a model system in combination with an arsenal of mechanistic techniques, including 13C kinetic isotope effect (KIE) experiments, deuterated labelling studies, variable temperature 1H NMR spectroscopy, and density functional theory calculations. From these studies, two distinct reaction pathways were identified for this transformation corresponding to either dual hydrogen bond (H-bond) activation or Bronsted acid catalysis. The former involving thiourea orchestrated bifurcated hydrogen bondin...