“…Attempts to proceed the Ni-catalyzed arylation of the achloroketone 20 met with failure. [21] Under the conditions reported by Britton and co-workers for the arylation of cyclobutanones [(D t BPF)PdCl 2 ,L iO t Bu, 4-bromoanisole, THF,6 0 8 8C], [22] a-arylcyclobutanone 21 was obtained from cyclobutanone 13 in 23 %y ield due to the poor diastereoselectivity. In the first route for the synthesis of the tricyclic core of 1, 19 from 7 (Scheme 3), intermolecular [2+ +2] thermal cycloaddition between dichloroketene and trisubstituted alkene was applied to assemble dichlorocyclobutanones.A lthough Shapiro coupling reaction followed by 1,4-addition furnished the key intermediate with af unctionalized cyclobutane core bearing two chiral centers,t he mismatched C8' stereochemistry and the subsequent operation of configuration inversion significantly lowered the overall efficiency.T herefore,w e explored an alternative strategy in which a-arylcyclobutanones were first established, followed by face-selective homologation to access the key cyclobutane skeleton with four chiral centers.W ith these thoughts in mind, we undertook aretrosynthetic analysis of 1 (Figure 6).…”