Palmerolide A (Figure 1) is a recently reported polyketide secondary metabolite with an impressive molecular architecture and biological profile.[1] This marine natural product was isolated from the circumpolar tunicate Synoicum adareanum, which is commonly found in the shallow waters around Anvers Island on the Antarctic Peninsula, and exhibits unusual selectivity against a number of cell lines in the 60 cell panel of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Specifically, palmerolide A was found to exhibit potent activity against the melanoma cell line UACC-62 (LC 50 = 18 nm), only modest cytotoxicity against the colon cancer cell line HCC-2998 (LC 50 = 6.5 mm) and the renal cancer cell line RXF 393 (LC 50 = 6.5 mm), and virtually no effect (LC 50 > 10 mm) against other cell lines, thus demonstrating a selectivity index of 10 3 among the cell lines tested. Interestingly, palmerolide A displayed an activity profile in the NCI 60 cell line panel that correlated with that of vacuolar ATPase inhibitors. [2] Palmerolide A was shown to inhibit V-ATPase with an IC 50 value of 2 nm and to be active in the NCIs hollow fiber assay. The intriguing biological properties of palmerolide A, along with its relative scarcity, prompted us to undertake its chemical synthesis.Inspection of the proposed structure of palmerolide A (1 a) reveals a 20-membered macrolide, an enamide-containing side chain, 7 olefinic bonds (3 of which are trisubstituted), and a carbamate moiety. Based on detailed NMR spectroscopic analysis, the relative and absolute configuration of this natural product was put forward as that shown in structure 1 a (Figure 1), although the structural assignments at C19 and C20 were not error proof. Specifically, while the NOE interactions and coupling constants exhibited by palmerolide A may exclude the two anti C19/C20 diastereomers, both syn structures could be possible. Furthermore, while Mosher ester studies suggested the absolute stereochemistry at the C7, C10, and C11 positions, the low optical rotation of the natural product [1] did not bode well for its diagnostic value as a means to confirm its absolute stereochemistry. Most recently, these suspicions were confirmed by an elegant study by De Brabander and co-workers (which culminated in the total synthesis of the unnatural enantiomer of palmerolide A), [3] with the structural revision of not only the relative stereochemistry between the C7-C11 and C19-C20 domains, but also of the absolute configuration of the molecule. Herein, we report our own efforts in this area that culminated in total syntheses of, among several isomers, the originally proposed structure 1 a and the revised structure 1 b (Figure 1) of palmerolide A by a modular and flexible strategy that allows access to variants of the palmerolide A molecule as depicted retrosynthetically in Scheme 1.It was envisioned that a Stille coupling reaction, a Yamaguchi esterification, a ring-closing metathesis, and an enamide coupling reaction would serve to assemble and