Stereocontrolled Total Synthesis of (+)-Altohyrtin A/Spongistatin 1 Financial support was provided by the EPSRC (GR/L41646), Cambridge Commonwealth Trust (Scholarship to M.J.C.), EC (Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship to J.L.A.), DFG (Postdoctoral Fellowship to T.T.), NSERC-Canada (Postdoctoral Fellowship to R.M.O.), Churchill College (Research Fellowship to D.J.W.), Kingapos;s College and Sims Fund, Cambridge (Scholarship to D.Y.K.C.). We also thank Merck and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals for generous support, and Dr. Anne Butlin (AZ) and Dr. Nick Bampos (Cambridge) for valuable assistance.

Abstract

As an exceptionally potent antimitotic macrolide, altohyrtin A/spongistatin 1 shows great promise in cancer chemotherapy but its extreme scarcity in the natural sponges has halted its further preclinical development. A highly stereocontrolled total synthesis, which exploits boron-mediated aldol bond constructions, has been realized to provide, for the first time, a useful amount of synthetic material.