Bioactive dietary polyphenols have
health benefits against a variety
of disorders, but some benefits of polyphenols may be not directly
related to them but rather to their metabolites. Recently, we have
identified the brain-available phenol glucuronide metabolite deoxyrhapontigenin-3-
O
-β-
d
-glucuronide (
5
) in perfused
rat brains following subacute treatment with the stilbene resveratrol
(
1
). However, the role of such a metabolite in the neuroprotective
activity of resveratrol (
1
) is not understood, in part
due to the noncommercial availability of
5
for performing
biological evaluation in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease
or other neurological disorders. Here, we describe a concise chemical
synthesis of deoxyrhapontigenin-3-
O
-β-
d
-glucuronide (
5
) and its precursor 4-
O
-Me-resveratrol (
2
), accomplished in four and six steps
with 74 and 21% overall yields, respectively, starting from commercially
available 3,5-dihydroxybenzaldehyde. Pivotal reactions employed in
the synthesis include the palladium-catalyzed C–C coupling
between 3,5-di-
tert
-butyldiphenylsilyloxystyrene
and
p
-iodoanisole in the presence of tributylamine
and the acid-catalyzed glucuronidation between the trichloroacetimidate-activated
glucuronic acid and 4-
O
-Me-resveratrol.