A direct catalytic asymmetric mannich-type reaction to syn-amino alcohols.

The Mannich reaction is one of the most widely utilized chemical transformations for the construction of nitrogen-containing compounds. With the increasing occurrence of nitrogen in drugs and natural products, highly asymmetric variants of the Mannich reaction are desirable. In this communication, we report the application of our dinuclear zinc catalyst to a highly asymmetric Mannich-type reaction to generate syn 1,2-amino alcohols.