Regioselective α-Deuteration of Michael Acceptors Mediated by Isopropylamine in D2O/AcOD.

Site-specific hydrogen/deuterium exchange is an important method to access deuterated compounds for chemical and biological studies. Herein is reported the first method for the regioselective α-deuteration of enals and enones. The transformation features D2O and AcOD as deuterium sources and amines as organocatalysts. The deuteration strategy is scalable and works on enals with a variety of substituted arene or heterocycle motifs as well as enones. The method has been applied to the synthesis of deuterated drug precursors.