Research News Aug 28th, 2010
Facile Construction of Polycyclic Frameworks via a Synergistic Strategy Combining the Diels-Alder Reaction, Ene Reaction and Allylation Reaction in One-pot
Dongzhen Li, Yang Cao, An Shi, and Zhenfeng Xi*
Chem. Asian J. 2010, in press. DOI: 10.1002/asia.201000257
From simplicity to complexity and diversity: This paper reports a synergistic strategy combining the Diels–Alder reaction, the ene reaction, and the allylation reaction all in one-pot to construct important polycyclic scaffolds.
The development of synthetic strategies for functional polycyclic scaffolds has been one of the most important areas in organic chemistry, especially for natural product synthesis and pharmaceutical chemistry. One of the most efficient approaches to achieve such a goal would be a cascade process involving several powerful elementary reactions in one-pot. The Diels-Alder reaction, the ene reaction, and the allylation reaction are among the most useful and the most frequently applied elemental reactions leading to formation of carbon-carbon bonds and carbon-hetero atom bonds. A synergistic strategy combining all these three powerful reactions in one-pot to construct polycyclic skeletons of great derivative possibility has been developed in this lab. Readily available starting materials with functional groups,multi-component cascade procedure, atom economy, and step economy are all well presented in this synergistic strategy directed towards molecular complexity and diversity.