Abstract
One of the major ongoing objectives in synthetic organic chemistry today has been the discovery and development of highly stereoselective carbon-carbon bond forming reaction. Since Cram proposed the general rules of the diastereotopic face selection of chiral aldehyde, stereoselective aldol and aldol addition reactions have been widely used in organic synthesis. Particularly during the past half decade, a number of stereo-controlled synthetic methods were devised and used as the key reactions for construction of the complex molecules. This review describes recent highly stereo-controlled reactions of chiral aldehydes, which are classfied into Cram, Anti-Cram, chelation and dipolar models. The first part presents fundamental concepts of aldol and aldol addition reactions. In the second part is discussed the reaction stereochemistry of chiral aldehydes involving α-alkoxy, α-alkyl and other aldehydes, and in the final part a double stereo-differentiation and a mutual kinetic resolution are outlined.
