A Gold Carbene Manifold to Prepare Fused γ-Lactams by Oxidative Cyclisation of Ynamides.

Gold-catalysed oxidative cyclisation reactions of ynamides offer great promise in γ-lactam synthesis but are limited by preferential over-oxidation to form α-keto imides. Evaluating the factors that might limit N-cyclisation pathways led to effective gold-catalysed conditions that allow access to different fused γ-lactams on changing the ynamide N-substituent and accommodate previously incompatible substitution patterns. New and efficient methods for the synthesis of functionalised 3-aryl indoles and cyclohepta[c]pyrrol-1-one derivatives are presented. These conditions illustrate the complementarity of gold catalysis to other metals.

Synthesis of pentahydroxylated pyrrolizidines and indolizidines.

1,3-Dipolar cycloaddition reaction of nitrone 7 and chemo-enzymatically obtained alkenediols 12 and 13 has been used in the synthesis of pentahydroxylated pyrrolizidines (8 and 10) and indolizidines (9 and 11). The pyrrolizidinic and indolizidinic skeletons were built after internal n-alkylation of the suitably functionalized pyrroloisoxazolidine intermediates obtained by the necessary protecting group manipulations. This method expands the scope of cycloaddition reactions in the synthesis of new and highly polyhydroxylated sugar-like alkaloids.