Hi, i'm new here and a bit new to synthesising drugs and i've learned most of my organic chemistry online reading about drug synthesis. So please bear with me.

I'm looking to make MDA from the reduction of nitropropene, and there seem to be a lot of different routes to do this, but i think i've seen a write up that looked particular simple and safe using NaBH4, but i can't remember where i've seen and i can't find it now.

Does anyone know a write up for this? Since this will be my first time attempting this, i'd be more comfortable doing it following an actual MDMA workup, rather than one that uses the same reaction but for another drug.

And something that has confused me is i've seen a lot of reductions of the nitropropene to the ketone, which made me question if the easy one step route even existed, because if you could do that why would people want to make the ketone. Even if it was for making MDMA i still don't see the reason, because you could still make MDMA from the MDA in the same ammount of steps.

Hope you can bring me some clarity on this matter.

Best regards,
SAN

i hear the most sucess with this reaction is had using sodium borohydride and nickel chloride.
that is also on rhodium's page i suggest you look into that.

Okay i see, i guess i've been lucky with my sources, because i stumbled upon it without even looking for it. I also knew about the other nitrostyrene to amine writeups, i just thought i had seen one for MDA once using NaBH4, and since i'm quite new to this i think it would be easier with a writeup specifically for MDA. But i guess i'll manage.

Also i was under the impression the NaBH4 reduction was the easiest, but now i'm beginning to doubt it, i haven't read about it in over a year, but now it's caught my interest again because i've got access to the nitrostyrene.

So do what do you think the easiest way from the nitrostyrene to MDA would be? I'd rather not do the hydrogenation because of the expensive catalysts or high pressure. I now i'm kinda asking to be spoon fed, but i have read through all the related articles in the rhodium archive, it just can be hard as a newbie to determine how easy or dangerous a reaction is just by looking at the reaction.

Thanks in advance,
SAN

Did you at least take a look at the link I've given you ? It's pretty much straightforward, excepting obtaining THF but you can probably use another solvent. There are probably many others ways to do it in the archive. You can use the same procedure as with any other nitropropenes, you just need to recalculate the stochiometry.

I'm not 100% sure, hope somebody can correct me If I'm wrong, but I suppose you can also reduce it like the nitrostyrenes...

nickel chloride + nabh4 iirc does not work properly, but i havent tried it myself.
hcl mediated transformation of the nitropropene into the ketone is out of the question, since the md bridge will not survive the conditions. to affect this transformation you must use acetic acid as the acid source, ala shulgin style.
if you want to reduce the nitropropene to the primary amide, you can use LAH. its nasty, but it works, i wouldnt recommend it large scale though.
your best bet is probably to first reduce the double bond with borohydride (plenty of rhodium procedures on this matter), and then reduce the nitro-group separatly like roidrage suggested. Al/Hg is fine, but for large scale, nothing beats pd/c CTH.
Al/Hg also will reduce the nitropropene proper to the amine in 1 step, at least it does so with a vareity of other nitroalkenes. down side is it is messy and uses not so pleasent Hg which must be disposed of properly, or you will suffer bad karma!
nabh4 alone will not reduce aliphatic nitro groups.
nabh4 + copper salts, for me, has failed consistantly to give any appreciable yields of amines from nitroalkenes.
nabh4+bf3.et2o works well for most nitroalkenes (though havent tried with the one you speak of). the down side of it, is that it requires somewhat large amounts of nabh4 (4-6eq.)

lots of other options out there i assume. pick a method that has lots of documentation, prefrably from actual science journals, and that uses reagents which you can easily get/have