Erythromycin macrolides discovery

One of the most famous examples of intramolecular attack of oxygen on the nitriUnm ion intermediate was observed in the Beckmann rearrangement of Erythromycin oxime derivatives and was used in the discovery and synthesis of the commercial macrolide antibiotic Azithromycin 464. In fact, the Beckmann rearrangement of Erythromycin A 9( )-oxime 460 produced only small amounts (5%) of the expected amide 463, along with two isomeric imino ethers (461 and 462) in a fair yield (38 and 43%) (equation 198). 

After the Second World War, the effort continued to find other novel antibiotic structures. This led to the discovery of the peptide antibiotics (e.g. bacitracin (1945)), chloramphenicol (Fig. 10.72) (1947), the tetracycline antibiotics (e.g. chlortetracycline (Fig. 10.71) (1948)), the macrolide antibiotics (e.g. erythromycin (Fig. 10.73) (1952)), the cyclic peptide antibiotics (e.g. cycloserine (1955)), and in 1955 the first example of a second major group of (3-lactam antibiotics, cephalosporin C (Fig. 10.41). 

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