Sulfanyl-methylene-5(4H)-oxazolones and β-sulfanyl-α-nitroacrylates as appealing dienophiles for the synthesis of conformationally constrained cysteine analogues

A new class of masked constrained cysteine derivatives containing the norbornen/ane scaffold were prepared by the way of Diels–Alder cycloaddition reaction by exploitation of two different dienophiles, sulfanyl-methylene-5(4H)-oxazolones and β-sulfanyl-α-nitroacrylates. The new norbornen/ane amino acid derivatives can be considered versatile building blocks due to the presence of the α,α-disubstituted amino acid function, suitable for peptide synthesis, but also by the carbon–carbon norbornene double bond, which could be variously functionalized.