Enantioselective Hydrogenations of Unsymmetrical Aromatics

Chiral saturated carbacyclic and heterocyclic structures are very frequent fragments of many natural products of high interest. Unsymmetrically substituted aromatics or hetero-aromatics could serve as very reasonable starting materials for a variety of synthons in the field of natural product synthesis, if there were a method available to render the hydrogenation of the respective aromatic precursor to the wanted saturated cyclic compound enantioselective. Several different strategies to solve this hitherto untackled problem are being developed .