A Typical Class of Marine Alkaloids Bromopyrroles

Anna Aiello, Ernesto Fattorusso, Marialuisa Menna, Orazio Taglialatela-Scafati 

Modem Alkaloids Stmcture, Isolation, Synthesis and Biology. Edited by E. Fattorusso and O. Taglialatela-Scafati Copyright 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH Co. KGaA, Weinheim ISBN 978-3-527-31521-5 

Bromopyrrole alkaloids are important not only for their ecological role and for chemotaxonomic considerations, but also for the number of interesting pharmacological activities they have been shown to possess. Among them, the cytotoxicity of agelastatin (see below) and the immunosuppressive activity of palau amine (see below) are remarkable. This is probably why the interest of organic chemists in total syntheses of bromopyrrole alkaloids has strongly increased since 2000. 

Until now, only one review article on bromopyrrole alkaloids has been published, covering the literature appearing up to the end of 2002 [9] this article was mainly focused on the chemistry of this alkaloid family, and a number of biomimetic and nonbiomimetic total syntheses of bromopyrrole alkaloids were discussed comprehensively. 

In this chapter we intend to provide a complete picture of the structures of bromopyrrole alkaloids updated to the first half of 2006. The biological activities of these compounds are described in outline, together with the plausible biogenetic pathways that have been proposed so far. An account of the synthetic approaches reported for preparation of some alkaloids is also given, even if it is not intended to be a systematic picture but only a few scattered notes. 

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