Total Synthesis Blog

Louisianins are group of pyridine-containing alkaloids isolated from Streptomyces sp. which exhibits many important biological activities (for example anticancer and so on). The structures of Louisianins C and D are shown below:

Ortho strategy has been chosen to construct such trisubstituted pyridines. 4-substituted pyridine seems to be a good starting material in such strategy. Let’s see strategic disconnection in retrosynthetic plan:

Total synthesis should be quick.

As you can see it starts with 4-cyanopyridine 2. First and second step are of course halogenations steps which go through ortho-lithiations. In first step bromine is introduced into molecule (through nucleophilic attack on CBr₄) and in second step – iodine. LTMP is lithium 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperide, a strong and sterically hindered base:

Next steps allow to construct five-membered ring:

Conversion 5 to unsaturated ester 6 is Heck reaction. Unsaturated ester 6 can be then hydrogenated on Adam’s catalyst to 7. 7 in turn is cyclized to 8 under basic conditions (enolisation and nucleophilic attack on CN group) and subsequent hydrolysis.

From ketone 8 both louisianins can be prepared under Stille coupling reaction conditions.

The only difference between those two reactions is adition of base (DBU = 1,8-diazabicycloundec-7-ene) which causes isomerisation to more stable (trans and disubstituted) alkene.

That’s all. Happy New Year and see:

Chang, C. -Y. et al., Tetrahedron (2009), doi:10.1016/j.tet.2008.11.075