908001-81-0Relevant articles and documents
Substituents on quinone methides strongly modulate formation and stability of their nucleophilic adducts
Weinert, Emily E.,Dondi, Ruggero,Colloredo-Melz, Stefano,Frankenfield, Kristen N.,Mitchell, Charles H.,Freccero, Mauro,Rokita, Steven E.
, p. 11940 - 11947 (2007/10/03)
Electronic perturbation of quinone methides (QM) greatly influences their stability and in turn alters the kinetics and product profile of QM reaction with deoxynucleosides. Consistent with the electron-deficient nature of this reactive intermediate, electron-donating substituents are stabilizing and electron-withdrawing substituents are destabilizing. For example, a dC N3-QM adduct is made stable over the course of observation (7 days) by the presence of an electron-withdrawing ester group that inhibits QM regeneration. Conversely, a related adduct with an electron-donating methyl group is very labile and regenerates its QM with a half-life of approximately 5 h. The generality of these effects is demonstrated with a series of alternative quinone methide precursors (QMP) containing a variety of substituents attached at different positions with respect to the exocyclic methylene. The rates of nucleophilic addition to substituted QMs measured by laser flash photolysis similarly span 5 orders of magnitude with electron-rich species reacting most slowly and electron-deficient species reacting most quickly. The reversibility of QM reaction can now be predictably adjusted for any desired application.
