Organic compounds containing carbonyl groups sometimes need protection so that they do not undergo reactions during transformations of other functional groups that may be present. A variety of approaches to protection and deprotection of carbonyls[6] including as dioxolanes[7] are known. For example, consider the compound methyl cyclohexanone-4-carboxylate, where lithium aluminium hydride reduction will produce 4-hydroxymethylcyclohexanol. The ester functional group can be reduced without affecting the ketone by protecting the ketone as a ketal. The ketal is produced by acid catalysed reaction with ethylene glycol, the reduction reaction carried out, and the protecting group removed by hydrolysis to produce 4-hydroxymethylcyclohexanone.
NaBArF4 can also be used for deprotection of acetal or ketal-protected carbonyl compounds.[6][7] For example, deprotection of 2-phenyl-1,3-dioxolane to benzaldehyde can be achieved in water in five minutes at 30 °C.[8]
In the case of neosporol, a Prilezhaev reaction[13] with trifluoroperacetic acid is used to convert a suitable allyl alcohol precursor to an epoxide, which then undergoes a ring-expansion reaction with a proximate carbonyl functional group to form the dioxolane ring.[10][11]
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