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Concept
Nicolaou Taxol total synthesis
Summary
The Nicolaou Taxol total synthesis, published by K. C. Nicolaou and his group in 1994 concerns the total synthesis of taxol. Taxol is an important drug in the treatment of cancer but also expensive because the compound is harvested from a scarce resource, namely the pacific yew.
This synthetic route to taxol is one of several; other groups have presented their own solutions, notably the group of Holton with a linear synthesis starting from borneol, the Samuel Danishefsky group starting from the Wieland-Miescher ketone and the Wender group from pinene.
The Nicolaou synthesis is an example of convergent synthesis because the molecule is assembled from three pre-assembled synthons. Two major parts are cyclohexene rings A and C that are connected by two short bridges creating an 8 membered ring in the middle (ring B). The third pre-assembled part is an amide tail. Ring
D is an oxetane ring fused to ring C. Two key chemical transformations are the Shapiro reaction and the pinacol coupling reaction.
The overall synthesis was published in 1995 in a series of four papers.
As illustrated in Retrosynthetic Scheme I, Taxol was derived from diol 7.2 by an ester bond formation, according to the Ojima-Holton method. This diol comes from carbonate 6.3 by the addition of phenyllithium. The oxetane ring in compound 6.3 was obtained via an SN2 reaction involving a mesylate derived from acetal 4.9. Ring B was closed via a McMurry reaction involving dialdehyde 4.8 which ultimately was derived from aldehyde 4.2 and hydrazone 3.6 using a Shapiro coupling reaction.
Retrosynthetic Scheme II indicates that both the aldehyde and the hydrazone used in the Shapiro coupling reaction were synthesized using Diels-Alder reactions.
As shown in Scheme 1, the ring synthesis of ring C began with a Diels-Alder reaction between diene 1.3 and dienophile 1.1 in the presence of phenylboronic acid (1.2), which, after addition of 2,2-dimethyl-1,3-propanediol, gave five-membered lactone 1.8 in 62% yield.
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