Total Synthesis of Marine Natural Products and Alkaloids
Summary
Marine natural products and alkaloids present unique structural complexity characterised by densely functionalised polycyclic frameworks and multiple stereogenic centres. Total synthesis—the chemical construction of these molecules from simple precursors—has matured into a crucial platform for drug discovery, enabling access to scarce metabolites and providing material for biological evaluation. Advances in enantioselective catalysis, cascade reactions, C–H activation and biocatalytic methods now allow for more concise and stereochemically precise routes to tetrahydroisoquinolines, norcembranoids and related alkaloid cores. These innovations address supply shortages of marine compounds and facilitate mechanistic studies, structure–activity relationship exploration and the development of new therapeutic leads in oncology, infectious disease and neuroscience.
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Total Synthesis of Marine Natural Products and Alkaloids publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in total synthesis of marine natural products and alkaloids across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Total synthesis: The complete chemical construction of a complex natural product from simple starting materials.
Enantioselective synthesis: A synthesis that preferentially generates one enantiomer of a chiral molecule over its mirror image.
Cascade reaction: A sequence of two or more bond-forming transformations performed under a single set of conditions without isolation of intermediates.
Semipinacol rearrangement: A rearrangement involving migration of an adjacent carbon group following epoxide opening or diol activation, leading to a more stable carbonyl product.
References
- A Convergent Total Synthesis of (+)-Ineleganolide. Journal of the American Chemical Society (2023).
- Total Syntheses of Scabrolide A and Nominal Scabrolide B. Journal of the American Chemical Society (2022).
- Total Synthesis of (−)-Cylindricine H. Organic Letters (2022).
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