Ni-promoted reductive cyclization cascade enables a total synthesis of (+)-aglacin B

• Si-Chen Yao,
• Jing-Si Cao,
• Jian Xiao,
• Ya-Wen Wang and
• Yu Peng

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2025, 21, 2548–2552, doi:10.3762/bjoc.21.197

• aryltetralin[2,3-c]furan skeleton embedded in this natural product. Keywords: aryltetralin; conjugate addition; cyclolignan; nickel; reductive coupling; Introduction Proksch and co-workers isolated aglacins A, B, C, and E (1–4, Figure 1) from the methanolic extract of stem bark of Aglaia cordata Hiern from

Tandem Hock and Friedel–Crafts reactions allowing an expedient synthesis of a cyclolignan-type scaffold

• Viktoria A. Ikonnikova,
• Cristina Cheibas,
• Oscar Gayraud,
• Alexandra E. Bosnidou,
• Nicolas Casaretto,
• Gilles Frison and
• Bastien Nay

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 162–169, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.15

• benzyl moiety on the substrate resulted in tandem Friedel–Crafts reactions to form the 1-aryltetraline products. These compounds share a close analogy to the cyclolignan natural products. Experimental observations and a DFT study support the involvement of an aldehyde intermediate during the Friedel

• reaction is possible upon elimination of the resulting benzylic alcohol on D, allowing another arylation forming E [18]. This complex sequence of transformations is herein applied to the synthesis of 1-aryltetralines, analogues of cyclolignan natural products having important medicinal applications [19][20

• -aryltetraline product 6 holds a skeleton similar to that of cyclolignan natural products (Figure 2), which have often been targeted by total synthesis [18]. Some of them like podophyllotoxin [25] and the semisynthetic derivative etoposide [26] have demonstrated valuable anticancer properties [19][20]. Thus, to