The scope of highly enantioselective and diastereoselective Michael additions of enolsilanes to unsaturated imide derivatives has been developed with use of [Cu((S,S)-t-Bu-box)](SbF6)2 (1a) as a Lewis acid catalyst. The products of these additions are useful synthons that contain termini capable of differentiation under mild conditions. Michael acceptor pi-facial selectivity is consistent with ...

The two competing mechanisms in the reaction of 3-trialkylsilyloxy-2-aza-1,3 dienes to form beta-lactams through a [2+2] electrocyclic ring closure or tetrahydrooxazinan-4-ones via a [4+2] hetero-Diels-Alder reaction were studied using Density Functional computations. Although the [2+2] and [4+2] mechanisms are typical of dienes, their competition, starting from the same diene intermediate, has...

Expedient asymmetric total syntheses of both (R)-podoblastin-S and (R)-lachnelluloic acid, representative of natural 3-acyl-5,6-dihydro-2H-pyran-2-ones, were performed. Compared with the reported total synthesis of (R)-podoblastin-S (14 steps, overall 5% yield), the present study was achieved in only five steps in an overall 40% yield and with 98% ee (HPLC analysis). In a similar strategy, the ...

In this review, I tell the story of the cobalt chemistry that has been developed in my group since 2011. First, we achieved the total synthesis of polyketide natural product trichodermatide A, which involved a late-stage Isayama-Mukaiyama hydration of an enol ether using cobalt(II) acetylacetonate (Co(acac)2) that gave the desired product chemo-, regio-, and diastereoselectively. After our repo...