The increasing interest in Achmatowicz rearrangement in organic synthesis calls for a more environmentally friendly protocol since the most popular oxidants m-CPBA and NBS produced stoichiometric organic side product (m-chlorobenzoic acid or succinimide). Mechanism-guided analysis enables us to develop a new catalytic method (Oxone/KBr) for AchR in excellent yield with K2SO4 as the only side product, which greatly facilitates the purification. This protocol was integrated with other transformations, leading to a rapid access to the highly functionalized dihydropyranones.

Fully functionalized pyranuloses derived from Achmatowicz rearrangement (AR) are versatile building blocks in organic synthesis. However, access to trans-2,6-dihydropyrans from pyranuloses remains underexplored. Herein, we report a new two-step trans arylation of AR products to access 2,6-trans-dihydropyranones. This new trans-arylation method built on numerous plausible, but unsuccessful, direct arylation reactions, including Ferrier-type and Tsuji-Trost-type reactions, was finally enabled by an unprecedented, highly regioselective γ-deoxygenation of AR products by using Zn/HOAc and a diastereoselective Heck-Matsuda coupling. The synthetic utility of the reaction was demonstrated in the first asymmetric total synthesis of (-)-musellarins A-C and 12 analogues in 11-12 steps. The brevity and efficiency of our synthetic route permitted preparation of enantiomerically pure musellarins and analogues (>20 mg) for preliminary cytotoxicity evaluation, which led us to identify two analogues with three-to-six times greater potency than the musellarins as promising new leads.

The first, diastereoselective total syntheses of musellarins A-C were achieved concisely with 7.8-9.8% yields in 15-16 steps. The key synthetic features include (i) an Achmatowicz rearrangement, Kishi reduction, and Friedel-Crafts cyclization to construct the tricyclic framework and (ii) Heck coupling of aryldiazonium salts to introduce the aryl group into the dihydropyran in a 2,6-trans fashion in the final stage of synthesis.