More than a quarter of a century ago, the Nozaki group'studied the asymmetric deprotonation of ethylbenzene using butyllithium in the presence of (-)-sparteine to isolate, after carboxylation, I-phenylpropanoic acid (5 15%) with a maximum enantiomeric excess (ee) of 30%. Sporadically, other investigations of sparteine as a chiral auxiliary were reported? but none of them proved to have a potential for practical development. The ...
