Wenpeng Ma, Fei Chen, Youran Liu, Yan-Mei He and Qing-Hua Fan*

The first asymmetric hydrogenation of 2,7-disubstituted 1,8-naphthyridines catalyzed by chiral cationic ruthenium diamine complexes has been developed. A wide range of 1,8-naphthyridine derivatives were effectively hydrogenated to give 1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-1,8-naphthyridines with up to 99% ee and full conversions. The method provides a practical and facile approach to the preparation of valuable chiral heterocyclic building blocks and useful motifs for a new kind of P,N-ligands.

This work has been published in Org. Lett. 2016, 18, 2730-2733.