Polysubstituted cyclohexanes and -hexenes represent important substructures in a number of natural products. Among several strategies for synthesizing such compounds, the tactical combination of a Diels-Alder reaction between a cyclic 1,3-diene and a suitable dienophile followed by cleavage of the bicyclic structure has been widely used [1]. As a consequence the stereochemistry of the two substituents that originate from cleavage of the bridge are cis to each other. This structural situation can be found, for example in the E-ring of the antitumor antibiotic dynemicin A [2,3]. The known total syntheses of dynemicin A have addressed this issue in different ways [4 -8]. In the course of the synthesis of analogs [9] of dynemicin A (Scheme 1) we planned to use the above mentioned strategy for establishing the array of rings spanning C-E. One of the two functional groups resulting from the cleavage of the Keywords: Cross-coupling, Cycloadditions, Ozonolysis, Dynemicin, Ring cleavage Abstract. A palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction between the arylstannane 5c and the bicyclic vinyl bromide 3, which was obtained by a Diels-Alder reaction, provided the substituted bicyclo[2.2.2]octa-2,5-diene 6. A subsequent ozonolysis of the less substituted double bond of 6 followed bridge will be transformed to a methyl group, while the other one would be used to fashion the enediyne (cf. structures A and B). In this paper, we report on initial studies in this direction resulting in the cyclohexene 8.As a dienophile methyl 3-bromopropiolate (2) was used [10]. This was converted to the bicyclic vinyl bromide 3 by a Diels-Alder reaction [11]. The problem in subsequent functionalization reactions of 3 is the possible aromatization reaction through a retro Diels-Alder reaction with the elimination of ethylene. For the substitution of the bromide with an aryl group the aryl metal derivatives 5a -c were prepared from the bromide 4 [12, 13] (Scheme 2). The corresponding zinc derivative 5a was not isolated and used directly [yield not determined (ND)] [14].