Synthetic studies on polymaxenolides: synthesis and structure elucidation of nominal epoxyafricanane and other africane-type sesquiterpenoids.

A racemic total synthesis of the sesquiterpenoid unit of the hybrid marine natural product polymaxenolide has been achieved based on a three-component assembly followed by ring-closing metathesis as the key steps. However, the spectral data of our product synthesized from Δ(9(15))-africanene by epoxidation were not identical with those of the natural product named epoxyafricanane. The structure confirmation of the synthetic nominal epoxyafricanane is described.