An efficient procedure for the directed reductive amination of β-hydroxy-ketones (3) for the stereoselective preparation of 1, 3-syn-amino alcohols (6) is reported. The operationally simple protocol uses Ti (i OPr) 4 for coordination of the intermediate imino alcohol (5) and PMHS as the reducing agent. The method was expanded to an asymmetric aldol reductive amination sequence to allow a highly convergent synthesis of the hydroxy-amine core of ...
