Synthesis and Evaluation of a 2,11-Cembranoid-Inspired Library

Electrochemical Tandem Olefination and Hydrogenation Reaction with Ammonia

An electrochemical Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons/hydrogenation tandem reaction was achieved using ammonia as electron and proton donors. The reaction could give two-carbon-elongated ester and nitrile from aldehyde or ketones directly. This reaction could proceed with a catalytic amount of base or even without a base. The ammonia provides both the electron and proton for this tandem reaction and enables the catalyst-free hydrogenation of an α,β-unsaturated HWE intermediate. More than 40 examples were reported, and functional groups, including heterocycles and hydroxyl, were tolerated.

Synthesis of Benzannulated Medium-ring Lactams via a Tandem Oxidative Dearomatization-Ring Expansion Reaction

Medium-ring natural products exhibit diverse biological activities but such scaffolds are underrepresented in probe and drug discovery efforts due to the limitations of classical macrocyclization reactions. We report herein a tandem oxidative dearomatization-ring-expanding rearomatization (ODRE) reaction that generates benzannulated medium-ring lactams directly from simple bicyclic substrates. The reaction accommodates diverse aryl substrates (haloarenes, aryl ethers, aryl amides, heterocycles) and strategic incorporation of a bridgehead alcohol generates a versatile ketone moiety in the products amenable to downstream modifications. Cheminformatic analysis indicates that these medium rings access regions of chemical space that overlap with related natural products and are distinct from synthetic drugs, setting the stage for their use in discovery screening against novel biological targets.

Diterpenes and Their Derivatives as Potential Anticancer Agents

As therapeutic tools, diterpenes and their derivatives have gained much attention of the medicinal scientists nowadays. It is due to their pledging and important biological activities. This review congregates the anticancer diterpenes. For this, a search was made with selected keywords in PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, Scopus, The American Chemical Society and miscellaneous databases from January 2012 to January 2017 for the published articles. A total 28, 789 published articles were seen. Among them, 240 were included in this study. More than 250 important anticancer diterpenes and their derivatives were seen in the databases, acting in the different pathways. Some of them are already under clinical trials, while others are in the nonclinical and/or pre-clinical trials. In conclusion, diterpenes may be one of the lead molecules in the treatment of cancer. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Synthesis of a Ribose-Incorporating Medium Ring Scaffold via a Challenging Ring-Closing Metathesis Reaction

A practical synthesis of a novel oxabicyclo[6.2.1]undecenetriol useful as a medicinal chemistry scaffold has been developed starting from l‐ribose. The sequence involves an oxidation/Grignard addition sequence and a challenging ring‐closing metathesis (RCM) reaction as the ring forming step. Exploration of the RCM substrate protecting groups revealed the key factor for successful nine‐membered medium ring formation to be conformational bias of the reacting alkenes of the RCM substrate by very bulky silyl ether protecting groups. The synthesis also allowed access to an epimeric triol and saturated and unsaturated variants of the nine‐membered ring. The medium ring conformation of the oxabicyclo[6.2.1]undecenetriol was determined by X‐ray crystallography and correlated to the solution state conformation by NMR experiments.

Synthesis and Evaluation of a 2,11-Cembranoid-Inspired Library

The 2,11-cembranoid family of natural products has been used as inspiration for the synthesis of a structurally simplified, functionally diverse library of octahydroisobenzofuran-based compounds designed to augment a typical medicinal chemistry library screen. Ring-closing metathesis, lactonisation and SmI2 -mediated methods were exemplified and applied to the installation of a third ring to mimic the nine-membered ring of the 2,11-cembranoids. The library was assessed for aqueous solubility and permeability, with a chemical-space analysis performed for comparison to the family of cembranoid natural products and a sample set of a screening library. Preliminary investigations in cancer cells showed that the simpler scaffolds could recapitulate the reported anti-migratory activity of the natural products.