Study of very reactive tautomeric phenol dienones as dienes in Diels-Alder reactions.

Masked ortho-benzoquinones are very reactive as diene partners in Diels-Alder reactions. Careful exploration of the orbital factors that govern their surprising behavior shows that their LUMO is almost as electron demanding as that of o-benzoquinone itself. Methyl substituents at either end of their diene system influence the activation energy through modification of the reaction pathway being more or less asynchronous.

Synthetic studies toward highly functionalized 5beta-lanosterol derivatives: a versatile approach utilizing anionic cycloaddition.

Stereoselective synthesis of the potentially biologically valuable 5beta-lanosteroidal-type backbone was achieved via anionic cycloaddition. Synthesis of the two new bicyclic Nazarov intermediates 14 and 40 and their cycloaddition with chiral cyclohexenone 25 and further functional group manipulations resulted in highly functionalized tetracyclic intermediates 28 and 44. These synthetic intermediates could lead to the total synthesis of new lanosterol-based inhibitors.

Pyranophane transannular diels-alder approach to (+)-chatancin: a biomimetic asymmetric total synthesis.

An asymmetric total synthesis of (+)-chatancin was achieved via a transannular Diels-Alder (TADA) reaction of an in situ generated macrocyclic pyranophane pseudobase. The presented route constitutes the second of two proposed biosynthetic pathways that involves a TADA reaction. It links this diterpene biogenetically to the cembranoids.