Carbene-Mediated Quaternarization of the Anomeric Position of Carbohydrates: Synthesis of Allylic Ketopyranosides, Access to the Missing α-Gluco and β-Manno Stereoisomers, and Preparation of Quaternary 2-Deoxy 2-Acetamido Sugars.

Following our work on the C-H functionalization of carbohydrates by the 1,5 insertion of metal-carbenes, we report herein the robust and scalable conversion of sugar γ-lactones into highly valuable glycosides having a quaternary anomeric position substituted by an allyl chain ready for further functionalization. A divergent synthetic approach furthermore provided a straightforward access to ketopyranosides with a large chemo- and stereodiversity at position 2.