This paper is dedicated to Professor A. I. Meyers in recognition of his seminal contributions to organic synthesisThe isopavine alkaloids of the Papaveraceae family were first recognized as a novel heterocyclic framework following intensive studies on their isolation and structure elucidation four decades ago. [1] Isopavines and pavines have been associated with varying pharmacological properties [2, 3] pertaining to Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease, and Downs syndrome. The traditional syntheses of the isopavines [4] have relied on intramolecular cyclizations of a-aryl-abenzylamino acetaldehydes, proceeding first to 1-benzyl-4hydroxy-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinolines, followed by a second cyclization. Syntheses of enantiomerically pure or enriched isopavine alkaloids have traditionally resorted to optical resolution, or starting with naturally occurring compounds. [5] Other syntheses of racemic isopavines are also known. [6] Natural O-methylthalisopavine was first prepared by Meyers and co-workers, [7] by utilizing chiral nonracemic formamidines as substrates in an asymmetric synthesis. Dominguez and co-workers [8] relied on b-amino alcohols as chiral auxiliaries in their synthesis of the same alkaloid.In view of the pharmacological importance of the isopavines, and the paucity of methods to access enantiopure analogues that would be useful to study selective interactions with designated receptors, we investigated various routes to their stereocontrolled synthesis. We report herein examples of highly stereocontrolled, diastereoselective [1,2]-Stevens rearrangements [9, 10] of 13-substituted dihydro methanodiarylazocines, which are readily available from a-amino acids, [11] to give 6-substituted enantiopure isopavines.Scheme 1 illustrates the sequence and the generality of the [1,2]-Stevens rearrangement. Methylation of the individual azocine analogues 1 a ± h afforded the corresponding quaternary ammonium salts 2 a ± h. Treatment with a solution of potassium tert-butoxide in 1,4-dioxane [2b] at 80 8C for 1 h, and chromatographic purification gave the corresponding 6-substituted isopavines 3 a ± h in excellent yields. The structures of 3 a and 3 e were ascertained by means of singlecrystal X-ray analysis (Figure 1) The facile construction of the 6R-methyl-O-methylthalisopavine 6 skeleton from the N,N-dibenzylamino alcohol 4 via the azocine 5 is shown in Scheme 2.The highly stereoselective [1,2]-Stevens rearrangement in this series is unprecedented [12,13] and can be rationalized by considering two reaction pathways (Scheme 3). Abstraction of a C-7 benzylic proton in the azocinium ion intermediate (pathway a) leads to ylide A, which fragments to the iminium anion A or its diradical equivalent. [10] This is in a favorable alignment for an intramolecular attack (recombination), which leads to the observed isopavine 3 a. On the other hand, abstraction of the C-5 benzylic proton generates ylide B, which upon fragmentation results in an anion or diradical that is destabilized by allylic 1,2-strain in the incip...