Design and synthesis of new immonium-type coupling reagents

A new family of immonium-type coupling reagents is described here. The differences in the carbocation skeletons of these reagents can be correlated with differences in stability and thus reactivity. The dihydroimidazole derivatives are highly unstable to air, whereas the salts derived from dimethylamine are the most stable and the pyrrolidino derivatives are of intermediate stability. These results should be taken into account mainly when coupling reagents are deposited in open vessels, such in some automatic synthesizers. As regards both coupling yield and retention of configuration, HOAt derivatives have been confirmed to be superior to those of HOBt in all cases. For peptides containing hindered residues, fluoroformamidinium salts are more convenient than the HOAt-based reagents. (c) Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co.