“…Natural products, such as ditryptophenaline (Springer et al, 1977), WIN-64821,WIN-64745 (Barrow et al, 1993;Popp et al, 1994) and leptosin S (Yamada et al, 2004) incorporate a 3a,3a 0 -bispyrrolidinoindoline core with contiguous stereogenic quaternary carbons and display cytotoxicity in various cell lines. Perhaps the most interesting is a C 2 -symmetrical piperazine-2,5-dione (WIN-64821), which is a competitive substance-P antagonist against the human NK1 receptor at submicromolar concentrations (Barrow et al, 1993;Popp et al, 1994;Oleynek et al, 1994;Sedlock et al, 1994) and also serves as an antagonist of the cholecystokinin type-B receptor (Hiramoto et al, 1994). The title compound, (I), was synthesized as part of a wider project to develop new synthetic methods for the preparation of bridged bis-DKPs (Polaske et al, 2009).…”