Taxane synthesis

Phil Baran and co-workers have reported in Nature Chemistry on the synthesis of the 6,8,6-ring system of taxanes by taking advantage of an intramolecular Diels-Alder reaction.

 

Nature Chemistry paper

Cascade for Taxol

Jean Suffert and co-workers at CNRS have reported on a palladium catalyzed cascade reaction to ultimately form the taxol ring system.

 

ACIEE paper

Ring Contraction of Taxol

T. Narender and co-workers at the Central Drug Research Institute in India have recently reported in the Journal of Natural Products of all places, on a novel contraction of the six membered ring in taxol to a five membered ring using BF3 etherate.

JNP paper

Taxol Studies

Rudiger Kaspera, Rodney Croteau and co-workers at Washington State University have recently published in Tetrahedron Letters on an in vitro study of taxol’s oxetane ring formation by synthesizing radiolabeled potential taxol substrates.  However, none of the surrogate substrates synthesized underwent rearrangement to form the oxetane ring.

TL paper

A New Approach To Taxol

Gerald Pattenden at the University of Nottingham has recently published in Tetrahedron on an intramolecular radical cyclization approach to access the 8,6-ring system of taxol starting from an alkynyl ketone, enone and a terminal iodide functionalities in the starting material.

Tetrahedron paper