In his original 1922 paper, Diels indicated that these reactions are promoted by catalytic amounts of bases such as potassium acetate. [1a] Inspired by this, we reasoned that we should be able to develop an organocatalytic, asymmetric variant of the same reaction. Recently, Jørgensen and co-workers have employed chiral Lewis acid complexes as the catalyst for the α-amination reaction, affording the α-amination products derived from α-monosubstituted β-ketoesters ...
