The patellazoles are a family of marine polyketide natural products first isolated from Lissoclinum patella in 1988 by both the Moore and Ireland groups. They exhibit significant cytotoxicity against the HCT 116 human colon tumour cells. To date however, their full 3D stereostructure have yet to be elucidated, which has hindered their development as potential drugs, and hampered full investigation into their biological mechanism of action and has deterred total synthesis efforts. This thesis describes synthetic efforts towards Patellazole B, which exhibits the highest potency of the three main congeners. To fully elucidate the structure and renew interest in the patellazoles as anticancer compounds, we have developed a flexible and modular synthesis that aims to define the unknown stereocentres within the pertinent region and allow for rapid fragment union. Compound 36 has been chosen as an initial target for NMR comparison studies. The synthesis of all eight diastereomers of this macrocycle should aid determination of the four unknown stereocentres. Chapter 2 describes the synthesis of the C1–C12 fragment, focusing on the configuring of the C5 methyl stereocentre and the construction of the C7-C10 stereotetrad via a boron-mediated anti aldol with an in-situ reduction. In the third chapter, the synthesis of the C13-C19 fragment is outlined. A boron-mediated glycolate aldol has been used to install the C16-C17 anti stereochemistry and a substrate-controlled reduction at C15 delivered the hydroxyl with high diastereoselectivity. Studies into the C¬17¬ methylation are also described.
Chapter 4 describes the synthesis of one possible diastereomer of the C20-C25 fragment, as a template for the preparation of the other 7 possible diastereomers. The route therefore employs only catalyst based control methods to install the three stereocentres, utilising a Sharpless asymmetric epoxidation and Evans aldol to construct the stereotriad. The 22R, 23S, 24S diastereomer has been initially chosen to investigate the later chemistry. Chapter 5 contains discussion of the ongoing work investigating fragment union and formation of the macrocycle. A Heck coupling reaction has been employed to construct the C19-C20 bond and a Suzuki coupling reaction has been developed to facilitate the C12-C13 bond formation. These two cross couplings have delivered the C1 - C25 fragment, 360, the final compound reported in this thesis, which is three steps away from the completed macrocycle and six from compound 36. The experimental procedures and spectroscopic characterisation of the synthesised intermediates can be found in Chapter 6 and the Appendix.