Catalytic aerobic oxidation and tandem enantioselective cycloaddition in cascade multicomponent synthesis.

An efficient multicomponent cascade transformation for the highly diastereo- and enantioselective synthesis of complex natural product inspired polycyclic products from simple starting materials is described. The cascade is initiated by copper-catalyzed aerobic CH oxidation of cyclopentadiene to cyclopentadienone followed by double catalytic asymmetric 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of azomethine ylides. The cascade synthesis efficiently yields structurally complex 5,5,5-tricyclic products with eight stereocenters with good yields and excellent diastereo- and enantiocontrol using one catalyst.