ChemInform Abstract: Recent Advances on the Synthesis of Piperidines Through Ruthenium-Catalyzed Ring-Closing Metathesis (RCM) Reactions

Ring-closing metathesis reactions of dialkenyl amines, amides and carbamates catalyzed by Ru-catalysts provide efficient approaches to six-membered nitrogen heterocyclic compounds, which are precursors of a variety of natural products and related compounds. Abstract Monoterpene indole alkaloids comprise a group of naturally occurring compounds, exhibiting a range of biological activities. These compounds have attracted great attention because of their interesting biosynthetic route and also as a challenging target for total synthesis. For such synthetic approach and structure - activity relationship studies, the knowledge about their absolute stereostructures is essential. This review summarizes the presently available results of studies on the determination of the absolute configuration of indole alkaloids by the use of circular dichroism (CD).