Novel approach towards one pot stereospecific synthesis of carbohydrate derived substituted imidazolines

A simple synthetic approach has been developed towards one pot synthesis of 2-imidazolines under mild acidic conditions from N-acetyl glucosamine via reductive amination followed by dehydrative cyclization. Synthetic studies were explored in detail with different amines and sugar derivatives. While the conversion was good, the corresponding substituted imidazolines were obtained in moderate yields.