Pure Appl. Chem., 2007, Vol. 79, No. 2, pp. 173-180
http://dx.doi.org/10.1351/pac200779020173
Natural products with taxol-like anti-tumor activity: Synthetic approaches to eleutherobin and dictyostatin
Abstract:
Eleutherobin and dictyostatin are antimitotic compounds which exert their cytotoxic activity by a taxol-like mode of action, i.e., hypernucleating tubulin assembly and interfering with the dynamic instability of the cytoskeleton during mitosis. A formal total synthesis of eleutherobin was accomplished by accessing a key intermediate reported by Danishefsky and coworkers in their 1998 synthesis of the natural product. The key step of our strategy, used for obtaining the [8.4.0] fused bicyclic ring system, is a ring-closing metathesis (RCM) reaction of a densely functionalized diene under forcing conditions, using Grubbs' second-generation catalyst. Synthetic approaches to dictyostatin are also described, and in particular the preparation of the C15-C23 fragment of the macrolide, containing 5 of its 11 stereocenters.
Keywords
antitumor agents; microtubule-stabilizing agents; natural products; ring-closing metathesis; stereocontrol; total synthesis.