Tetrahedron report 1145Progress in the total synthesis of epoxyquinone natural products: An update

Epoxyquinone natural products continue to attract the attention of organic synthesis community worldwide, owing to their increasingly diverse and complex molecular architectures and broad spectrum biological activities associated with them. The last decade, in particular, has witnessed considerable activity and advances towards the total synthesis of this family of natural products with some notable successes. These efforts, deploying appropriate, contextual and emergent synthetic methodologies have led to the total synthesis of numerous epoxyquinone natural products spread over the entire structural landscape, with the added value of generating new chemical diversity space around their scaffold. This flurry of activity since 2005 lends some urgency to provide an update that documents and highlights the achievements in the intervening years and reflects on the new opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

Graphical abstractDownload high-res image (181KB)Download full-size image