Alternative Ketamine Synthesis

[daedalus]

Ok, so I need an alternative K synth where I can attach the Oxo at the 4 position rather than the 2.

The only synth that seems remotely able to do is the new Iranian synth but swapping out the Oxophenyl for a 1,4-dioxo-phenyl ring and then cleaving the oxo with a deoxidizing agent after protecting the 4-oxo with .... (What would work best here and how do I selectively protect just the 4-oxo rather than the 1?)??

If anyone could give me any tips I'd be very grateful. I assume after the deoxidation I just follow the rest of the synth to the letter, right?

 

[Fenster]

I don't know if you will get an answer to this here. Ketamine seems to be extremely fickle to get viable yields even with experience and good equipment. I hope you find the answers you are looking for.

 

[daedalus]

I've been looking through journals and while I'm an amateur chemist with a lot of experience in the field...what if the cyclohexyl ring was stabilised by the two double bonds before being treated to the 2-Cl-phenyl. You'd need to bind them though and the methyl bridge in the main synths would need to be held by the phenyl, correct?
That is, if one doesn't want to mess around with the Oxo bonds on the cyclohexyl.

So; (See pic below)

Anyway that's the rough idea of it, taking away all the reagents needed for the reaction.

Would this work just like with Ketamine or is that methyl bond integral to the creation of the double bond at 2? Could it not get filtered out once it has nowhere to go? Or would that complicate things even further by adding a random carbon somewhere on the main body of Ketamine?

Even then though, that methyl bond, wherever it manages to stick to, could be demethylated fairly easily without altering the rest of the compound, right?

I realise the brittality of Ketamine in the first place but let's say that it's rock solid, that reaction would work, right?

Is there any way to strengthen the molecule? I'm talking grand scale here, so atomically strengthening all of the bonds with another agent before it undergoes the reaction and then simply removing it after.
Would fluoromethanamic acid work? (Just to pad it out a bit so the Flourine doesn't fuck anything up in the reaction, like replacing Chlorine etc!)

As I said I'm more the neurology side of psychoactives so please be gentle!

PS; The MethyltriIodide is meant to be an arrow; sorry if it's confusing!

 

[Fenster]

I'll forward your questions to friend but this might help, I'll DM you.

 

[daedalus]

Or...
What if the starting material /was/ Ketamine? Breaking the double bond would be tricky but separating the two cyclic groups beforehand would save the Chlorine (possibly the amine too), so you break the double bond, demethylate, dehydroxylate and then join the two afterwards... actually maybe you don't even need to dehydroxylate it, the hydroxy would shear off in the joining of the two groups and...well depending on the solution you're using, join the acid/base in solution which then just needs to be siphoned off.

Is this making sense? Or am I completely off the garden path now?!