Jorumycin is a structurally complex, pentacyclic organic compound produced by a marine mollusk. The success of a similar compound, trabectedin, in treating certain types of cancer has focused attention on exploring jorumycin's pharmaceutical properties. Welin et al. developed a succinct route to synthesizing jorumycin and the closely related jorunnamycin A that deliberately diverges from the putative biosynthetic pathway underlying prior chemical syntheses. This route, which hinges on a carefully optimized asymmetric catalytic hydrogenation, can be easily modified to introduce unnatural structural diversity for functional optimization in further drug discovery research.
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http://mct.aacrjournals.org/content/6/11_Supplement/C60