Chiral Brønsted Acids and Hydrogen Bonding Donors

Abstract

AbstractThe field of natural product syntheses has been dominated by (transition-) metal catalyzed asymmetric reactions for decades. However, besides the very broad range of different transformations that can be achieved by metal catalysis, the use of substoichiometric amounts of small-organic molecule catalysts (organocatalysis) has proved also to possess an enormous potential for a variety of reactions. Over the last few years numerous impressive examples on the use of organocatalysts in the syntheses of complex natural products and other biologically active molecules have been reported. Very often these reactions have resulted in a significant reduction of reaction steps, leading to more efficient and elegant routes.The intention of this contribution is to provide the reader with an illustrative overview concerning successful and widely used applications of organocatalysis in the field of natural product synthesis. The main focus will be on organocatalytic key-steps for each (multi-step) synthesis described, whereas other often particularly innovative transformations will be omitted, as this would be beyond the scope of this volume.KeywordsTotal SynthesisIndole AlkaloidPhenylboronic AcidBifunctional CatalystCinchona AlkaloidThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.