In 2002, the Mitsubishi Pharma group reported the isolation of a telomerse inhibitor, D8646-2-6 (1) from the culture broth of fungus Epicoccum purpurascens.1) The compound has a unique C 3 -pyranosyl 4-hydroxypyrone moiety 2) and conjugated polyene unit. [3][4][5][6][7] However the structure of 1 including the relative and absolute stereochemistry has not been fully elucidated yet. The potent biological activity and structural complexity of this compound prompted us to initiate synthetic studies toward 1. In our preceding paper, we have reported the construction of the C-glycosyl 4-hydroxy pyrone moiety of 1. Comparison of the NMR spectra of the C 3 -galactopyranosyl 4-hydroxy-2-pyrone moiety 2 with those of natural 1, demonstrated that the carbohydrate moiety of the latter compound to be C 3 -galactopyranoside (Fig. 1).
8)Our synthetic strategy toward the total synthesis of 1 is shown in Chart 1. Due to the labile nature of the polyeninc side chain, our synthestic strategy involved an initial aldol condensation of the pyrone moiety with the side chain unit (C8-C12), followed by the elongation of the remaining side chain unit. Since the stereochemistry at C21 and C23 was not determined, we envisaged that phosphonate 4 would serve as a versatile key intermediate for the synthesis of D8646-2-6 and its stereoisomeres. Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons reaction was successfully utilized by Cha and co-workers in the total synthesis of citreoviridin 9) which contains polyene conjugated with pyrone ring. Phosphonate 4 could be synthesized by Stille coupling 10) of triene 15 with vinyl stannane which contains phosphonate. 11) Although there have been some reports concerning the aldol-type reaction and alkylation of pyrones, 12-24) the application of this approach to a carbohydrate-containing compound is unprecedented. Since oxygenated functionalities of substrates might influence on the reactivity of carbanion, the reactivity of such carbohyrare-bearing pyrones as well as its synthetic utilities is quite interesting. Herein, we report the synthesis of the key intermediate 4 using aldol-type reaction of carbohydrate containing pyrone 7 followed by stepwise dehydration and Stille coupling with vinyl stannane 5 which contains phosphonate group.The feasibility of the key aldol-type reaction was evaluated through model systems. The aldol-type reaction of 7 [25][26][27] with (2E,4E)-hexa-2,4-dienal by the simple treatment with LiHMDS to give 8 in only 6% yield and 62% of 7 was recovered (Chart 2).However, the aldol-type reaction of 4-methoxy-6-methyl-2-pyrone 9 with (2E,4E)-hexa-2,4-dienal proceeded smoothly under the same conditions to afford the aldol product 10 in 87% yield. These results indicated that the carbohydrate moiety greatly influenced the aldol-type reaction. We reasoned that the highly oxygenated functional group of 7 might decrease the reactivity of the pyrone-stabilized carbanion through the coordination to the lithium ion or by steric The synthesis of the key intermediate (4) in the proposed route to D8646-2-6 is desc...