A modified procedure for the synthesis of highly enantiomerically enriched α-amino acids is described that involves the direct alkylation of pseudoephedrine glycinamide hydrate (1⊙ H2O) followed by hydrolysis. The modified procedure was developed to overcome several inconvenient aspects of our earlier reported procedure. Advantages of the new method include (1) a greatly simplified one-step synthesis of the alkylation substrate (1⊙ H2O) by ...
