The stereocontrolled total synthesis of altohyrtin A/spongistatin 1: the AB-spiroacetal segment.

The convergent synthesis of the C1-C15 AB-spiroacetal subunit of altohyrtin A/spongistatin 1 is described. This highly stereocontrolled synthesis relies on matched boron aldol reactions of chiral methyl ketones, under Ipc(2)BCl mediation, to establish the C5, C9 and C11 stereocentres, and formation of the desired thermodynamic spiroacetal under acidic conditions. The scalable synthetic sequence developed provided access to multi-gram quantities of , thus enabling the successful completion of the total synthesis of altohyrtin A/spongistatin 1, as reported in Part 4.