Iron- and indium-catalyzed reactions toward nitrogen- and oxygen-containing saturated heterocycles.

A myriad of natural and/or biologically active products include nitrogen- and oxygen-containing saturated heterocycles, which are thus considered as attractive scaffolds in the drug discovery process. As a consequence, a wide range of reactions has been developed for the construction of these frameworks, much effort being specially devoted to the formation of substituted tetrahydropyrans and piperidines. Among the existing methods to form these heterocycles, the metal-catalyzed heterocyclization of amino- or hydroxy-allylic alcohol derivatives has emerged as a powerful and stereoselective strategy that is particularly interesting in terms of both atom-economy and ecocompatibility.

Isolation, structural determination and synthetic approaches toward amphidinol 3.

This review highlights the isolation and the structural determination of amphidinol 3 (AM3), as well as the synthetic efforts to its preparation. The mechanism of action of AM3 will not be developed herein.

Diastereoselective synthesis of the C14–C29 fragment of amphidinol.

An efficient stereoselective synthesis of the C14–C29 fragment highlighting a coupling reaction between a 1,3-dithiane derivative and an α-branched aldehyde was realized. This highly convergent synthesis involved two chiral pools, L-malic acid and (+)-camphorsulfonic acid, which are the starting compounds to control the six stereogenic centers present in the C14–C29 fragment of amphidinol 3.

Diastereoselective synthesis of the C17-C30 fragment of amphidinol 3.

The diastereoselective synthesis of the C17-C30 fragment of amphidinol 3 (AM3) 1 was achieved from the enantio-enriched aldehyde 20, Weinreb amide 14 and 2-bromo-3-(trimethylsilyl)propene, which was used as a bifunctional conjunctive reagent. The absolute configuration of the stereogenic centers, in both aldehyde 20 and Weinreb amide 14, were efficiently controlled by using (+)-(R)-methyl-p-tolylsulfoxide as the unique source of chirality.

FeCl(3)-Catalyzed highly diastereoselective synthesis of substituted piperidines and tetrahydropyrans.

The eco-friendly and highly diastereoselective synthesis of substituted cis-2,6-piperidines and cis-2,6-tetrahydropyrans is described. The key step of this method is the iron-catalyzed thermodynamic equilibration of 2-alkenyl 6-substituted piperidines and 2-alkenyl 6-substituted tetrahydropyrans allowing the isolation of enriched mixtures of the most stable cis-isomers.