Macrocyclic natural products diene precursor

Heteroaromatic motifs are not the only accessible products of a cycloaddition/cycloreversion strategy. Cleverly shaped six-membered dienes with an intrinsic leaving group might also act as precursors for phenyl moieties. A definitely irreversible cycloreversion tailors this route for the integration of arenes into strained scaffolds. Beaudry and co workers [12] embarked on the synthesis of the conforma-tionally chiral macrocyclic natural product cavicularin. A vinyl sulfone moiety, acting as an alkyne equivalent, underwent a Diels-Alder reaction with a neighboring... 

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