A unified total synthesis of stemoamide-type alkaloids is reported. Our synthetic approach features the chemoselective convergent assembly of five-membered building blocks via stemoamide as the common precursor to tetracyclic natural products. The synthesis consists of two successive coupling reactions of the three five-membered building blocks. The first coupling reaction is the vinylogous Michael addition/reduction sequence, which enables the gram-scale synthesis of stemoamide. The second coupling reaction is a chemoselective nucleophilic addition to stemoamide. While the lactone-selective nucleophilic addition to stemoamide affords saxorumamide and isosaxorumamide, the lactam-selective reductive nucleophilic addition leads to the formation of stemonine. Both chemoselective nucleophilic additions enable direct modification of stemoamide, resulting in highly concise and efficient total syntheses of the stemoamide-type alkaloids.
An iridium-catalyzed
reductive nucleophilic addition to secondary
amides is reported. After the iridium-catalyzed reduction, the resulting
imines can undergo the Strecker reaction, the Mannich reaction, allylation,
and [3 + 2]-cycloaddition. The method shows high chemoselectivity
in the presence of other functional groups such as methyl ester.
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