Abstract

As a strategy for total synthesis, steps involving catalytic asymmetric transformations are attractive — high enantioselectivities can be achieved, only very small amounts of enantiopure material (in the form of ligands or catalysts) are required as an input, and the resulting stereochemistry can be used to direct the asymmetric construction of the remainder of the molecule. Moreover, catalytic transformations that direct the formation of two stereocentres in a single step are particularly powerful — they reduce the overall number of reaction steps required in a synthesis and can be used to install stereocentres remote from one another in the molecular scaffold.