2,3-Trimethylene-4(3H)-quinazolinone (deoxyvasicinone, 1aa) 1) and 2,3-tetramethylene-4(3H)-quinazolinone (mackinazolinone, 1ba) 2,3) are not only the alkaloids isolated from Peganum and Mackinlaya species, respectively, but are also prepared chemically before the isolation from natural sources. [4][5][6] The establishment of a simple and efficient synthetic method for these alkaloids has long been a challenging subject. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] In addition, these substances are a part of the family of intriguing alkaloids that include the bronchodilator vasicinone (2a) from Adhatoda vasica, 21) antiendotoxic isaindigotone (2b) from Isatis indigotica, 22) topoisomerase Idependent cytotoxic luotonin A (3) from Peganum nigellastrum, 23) antibiotic tryptanthrin (4) from yeast (Candida lipolytica) 24,25) and later from cannon ball tree (Cououpita guianensis), 26) anti-inflammatory rutaecarpine (5) 27) from Evodia rutaecarpa, and related alkaloids (Fig. 1).
28)Since Niementowski's preparation of 4(3H)-quinazolinone by fusing anthranilic acid with formamide, 29) several methods attempting the synthesis of modified quinazolinones have been reported. 1,[30][31][32][33] Although most of these are applicable to acyclic amides, methods for cyclic amides, especially without an aryl group, are somewhat limited. [34][35][36][37] These limitations have led to the continuous development of new procedures for cyclic amides, such as cyclocondensation of isatoic anhydride with lactams, 12) metal catalyzed reductive N-heterocyclization of N-(2-nitrobenzoyl)lactams in the presence of CO,13,14) reaction of 2-aminobenzamide with succinic anhydride, 15) intramolecular aza-Wittig reaction of N-(2-azidobenzoyl)lactams, 9,16) condensation of anthranilic acid with O-alkyllactims 6,[18][19][20] or S-alkyllactims, 8) reaction of anthranilic acid with SOCl 2 followed by cyclization with lactams, 17) cyclization of iminochlorides generated from lactam and methyl anthranilate, 11) solid-phase synthesis, 7,9) and microwave assisted synthesis.10,12) Nevertheless, the biological importance of 4(3H)-quinazolinone and related compounds still spurred the development of a new and simple synthetic method for theses compounds. [38][39][40][41][42][43] As a part of our research on biologically important natural products, we herein described a simple one-pot procedure for the preparation of 1 as well as related alkaloids 3, 4 and 5 in multi-gram quantity.Although an earlier study revealed that iminoketene (8), generated from the reaction of anthranilic acid (6) and SOCl 2 , underwent cycloaddition to cyclic iminols, which are tautomers of the corresponding lactams (9), to yield 1 in 70-82% yield, 19) we sometimes have been unable to repeat the reactions.44) Whenever we failed to generate the desired products, imine compounds (10) were isolated as major products (Chart 1). Although we could convert these imines (10) to the desired 2,3-tri-and 2,3-tetramethylene-4(3H)-quinazolinones by employing polyphosphoric acid-catalyzed deh...