Palladium Catalyzed Reduction of Aryl Sulfonates. Selectivity Control and Application to Anthracycline Chemistry

The clinically useful antitumor anthracyclines daunorubicin and doxorubicin represent the results of an original research line of Farmitalia-Carlo Erba begun about thirty years ago as screening of antitumor activity of metabolites isolated from the cultures of several strains of Streptomyces [1]. As all other anthracyclines these molecules consist of an aglycone moiety and an aminosugar joined through a glycosidic bond at C-7; the two structures differ only at C-14 where daunorubicin bears a methyl group and doxorubicin an hydroxymethyl moiety (Figure 1).