Merck Center for Catalysis at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
Nature. 2011 Jul 13;475(7355):183-8. doi: 10.1038/nature10232.
Organic chemists are now able to synthesize small quantities of almost any known natural product, given sufficient time, resources and effort. However, translation of the academic successes in total synthesis to the large-scale construction of complex natural products and the development of large collections of biologically relevant molecules present significant challenges to synthetic chemists. Here we show that the application of two nature-inspired techniques, namely organocascade catalysis and collective natural product synthesis, can facilitate the preparation of useful quantities of a range of structurally diverse natural products from a common molecular scaffold. The power of this concept has been demonstrated through the expedient, asymmetric total syntheses of six well-known alkaloid natural products: strychnine, aspidospermidine, vincadifformine, akuammicine, kopsanone and kopsinine.
有机化学家现在能够在足够的时间、资源和努力下合成几乎任何已知的天然产物的小量。然而，将全合成方面的学术成功转化为复杂天然产物的大规模构建以及大量具有生物相关性的分子的开发，对合成化学家来说仍然是一个巨大的挑战。在这里，我们展示了两种受自然启发的技术，即有机级联催化和集体天然产物合成，可以促进从常见的分子支架制备各种结构多样的天然产物的有用量。这一概念的强大功能已通过 Expedient、不对称全合成 6 种著名生物碱天然产物：士的宁、阿朴斯珀米丁、长春弗林、阿枯米丁、考普酮和考普西宁得到证明。
