Natural products direct catalysis

Much effort has been directed at developing aqueous Diels-Alder reactions toward the syntheses of a variety of complex natural products. Grieco employed micellar catalysis and pure water as the solvent for the Diels-Alder reaction of dienecarboxylate with a variety of dienophiles. For example, when the Diels-Alder reaction in Scheme 12.3 was carried out in water, a higher reaction rate and reversal of the selectivity were observed, compared with the same reaction in a hydrocarbon solvent (Scheme 12.3).81 Similarly, the reaction of 2,6-dimethylbenzoquinone with sodium ( )-3,5-hexadienoate (generated in situ by the addition of 0.95 equiv sodium bicarbonate to a suspension of the precursor acid in water) proceeded for 1 hour to give a 77% yield of the adduct... 

C-H activation remains an important topic for catalysis even after thirty years of intensive research. The potential shortcuts it offers for many present routes to a wide variety of chemicals that are produced will continue to inspire industrial and academic research [32], An interesting example involves the enantiospecific, coordination-directed C-H bond functionalisation in the synthesis of a natural product, rhazinilam, an anti-tumor agent. The resulting vinyl moiety obtained in the dehydrogenation was subsequently carbonylated to form a cyclic amide [33],... 

From the 1980s on, many efforts were directed toward asymmetric induction of nitrile oxide cycloadditions to give pure (dia)stereoisomeric isoxazolines, and acyclic products derived from them (17,18,20-23). The need to obtain optically active cycloaddition products for use in the synthesis of natural products was first served by using chiral olefins, relying on 1,2-asymmetric induction, and then with optically active aldehydes or nitro compounds for the nitrile oxide part. In the latter case, insufficient induction occurs using chiral nitrile oxides, a problem still unsolved today. Finally, in the last 5 years, the first cases of successful asymmetric catalysis were found (29), which will certainly constitute a major area of study in the coming decade. 

Chiral aryl acetic acids constitute a privileged class of target structures due to their prevalence in bioactive natural products and pharmaceuticals and so, unsurprisingly, they constitute attractive targets for asymmetric synthesis [198]. The face-selective addition of a nucleophile to an aryl alkyl ketene provides a very direct entry for the preparation of such compounds. Although this can be achieved by the use of a chiral nucleophile or acid (cf. Scheme 8.1) [199], catalysis of the addition of an achiral nucleophile is clearly attractive from the standpoint of efficiency. 

Biaryl structures are found in a wide range of important compounds, including natural products and organic functional materials [8,80,81]. One of the most common and useful methods for preparing biaryls is the palladium-catalyzed coupling of aryl halides with arylmetals (Scheme 1, mechanism A). On the other hand, aryl halides have been known to couple directly with aromatic compounds as formal nucleophiles under palladium catalysis. While the intramolecular cases are particularly effective, certain functionalized aromatic compounds such as phenols and aromatic carbonyl compounds, as well as... 

The asymmetric synthesis of cyclopropanes has attracted continual efforts in organic synthesis, due to their relevance in natural products and biologically active compounds. The prevalent methods employed include halomethylmetal mediated processes in the presence of chiral auxiliaries/catalysts (Simmons-Smith-type reactions), transition-metal-catalyzed decomposition of diazoalkanes, Michael-induced ring closures, or asymmetric metalations [8-10,46], However, the asymmetric preparation of unfunctionahzed cyclopropanes remains relatively undisclosed. The enantioselective activation of unactivated C-H bonds via transition-metal catalysis is an area of active research in organic chemistry [47-49]. Recently, a few groups investigated the enantioselective synthesis of cyclopropanes by direct functionalization reactions. 

Bolmgren I, Norin T 1981 Direct methylation of salts of acids in hydrolysis mixtures of natural products by phase transfer catalysis. An investigation of the suberin fraction of birch bark (Betula verrucosa Erh.). Acta Chem Scand 20B 742... 

Taddol catalysis of cycloadditions can be extended to other reactive dienes. Ding and coworkers showed in 2004 that taddol 1 was capable of catalyzing the cycload-dition of Brassard s diene with various aromatic aldehydes to give 5-lactone products directly on reaction workup (Scheme 10.5) [61]. The products were obtained in good yields (up to 85%) and good to high enantioselectivities (68-91% ee). The methodology was applied to the synthesis of the natural product (S)-(-l-)-dihydroka-... 

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