It’s all in one pot!

Yen-Ho Chu and co-workers at the National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan have published in Organic Letters on a synthesis of luotonin.  This compound has in vitro activity against  murine leukemia P-388 cell line with an IC50 value of 6.3 micromolar.

OL paper

Zn/Yb-Mediated Conia-Ene Reaction

Jin-Heng Li and co-workers from Hunan Normal University have published in Synthesis on a Conia-ene reaction using Yb and Zn.  This reaction is catalytic in zinc but stoichiometric in ytterbium.  When a terminal alkyne is used, the cyclization is in the exo-dig mode, but when an internal alkyne is used, the cyclization is in the endo-dig mode.

Synthesis paper

Two Step Access to Substituted Amino-pyrroles

Takeo Konakahara and co-workers at the Tokyo University of Science have reported in the European Journal of Organic Chemistry on a multicomponent approach to synthesize aza dienes and followed by a ytterbium catalyzed [4+2] reaction between the azadiene and TMS-cyanide.

European JOC paper

Synthesis of Platyphyllide

Atsushi Nishida and co-workers from Chiba University have recently reported in JOC on the asymmetric synthesis of platyphyllide with the key reaction being an asymmetric Diels-Alder reaction.

JOC paper

Propargyl/Allyl/Vinyl Silanes

Marek Chmielewski and co-workers at the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences have recently reported in Tetrahedron on some intramolecular cyclization reactions generating an acyliminium ion in the presence of either a propargyl, allyl, or vinyl silane.

Tetrahedron paper