High temperatures are usually required when the Dakin-West reaction is carried out with pyridine as the solvent, but addition of DMAP enables the reaction to be performed at room temperature and with better yields¹.

This modification of the Dakin-West reaction has been utilized in the first step of a three step sequence for the conversion of N-acylamino acids to enamides².

It has been shown that glutamic acid yields a pyrrolidone under Dakin-West conditions in the presence of a catalytic amount of DMAP³.

Click here to see a recent example of the use of DMAP to catalyze a larger scale Dakin-West  synthetic sequence.

1. G. Hoefle, W. Steglich, and H. Vorbrueggen, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Engl., 17, 569 (1978).

2. U. Redeker, N. Engel, and W. Steglich, Tetrahedron Lett., 4263 (1981).

3. J. Lepschy, G. Hoefle, L. Wilschowitz, and W. Steglich, Annalen, 1753 (1974).