Recent Applications of Cyclopropane-Based Strategies to Natural Product Synthesis

摘要

Activated cyclopropanes show versatile reactivity and are therefore powerful building blocks in organic chemistry and natural product synthesis. This review focuses on recent applications of cyclopropane-based approaches to the syntheses of natural products. These applications include diverse processes involving cyclo-propanation-ring-opening-cyclization or ring expansion to form key natural product skeletons. Cyclopropanes play an important role in organic synthesis. When the strained three-membered ring is appropriately activated, the resulting cyclopropane derivatives are valuable reactants for rapid generation of molecular complexity. In particular, donor-acceptor (DA) cyclopropanes, which are doubly activated by vicinally substituted electron-donating and electron-withdrawing groups, are particularly useful synthetic intermediates, since they cleave readily under mild conditions to form reactive 1,3-zwitterionic intermediates that can participate in various reactions.