Current Trends in Organic Synthesis, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1999

The last two decades have seen a rapid growth in the synthetic processing of both simple and complex molecules, aimed at meeting the needs of society in all aspects of life. Many efforts have been devoted to the development of new biologically active compounds, new materials with innovative properties such as bio-compatibility, new catalysts that allow highly selective transformations, and technologies that facilitate the synthetic pro­ cesses. This book is a compendium of recent progress in all these aspects of synthetic chemistry. It collects the lectures of the XII International Conference on Organic Synthesis, held in Venice from June 28 to July 2, 1998, in which the present state of art of this discipline has been reported. The topics covered include: combinatorial chemistry, new synthetic methods, stereo­ selective synthesis, metal-mediated synthesis, and target oriented synthesis. The book collects the contributions, in the mentioned topics, of 43 scientists from 19 different countries. The contributions presented in the Conference as plenary lectures are reported in the first section of the book. Particular attention has been dedicated to combinatorial chemistry, a new and promising methodology for the synthesis of libraries of pharmaco­ logically interesting compounds in order to allow the automatic pharmacological screening of thousands of compounds. The Conference has dedicated to combinatorial chemistry a mini-symposium in which scientists from academy and companies have described the current trends of this very new technology.

Plenary Lectures.- Chiral Relay Auxiliaries.- Asymmetric Catalysis with Chiral Lewis Bases.- About the Use of Molecular Workbenches and Platforms in Organic Synthesis.- From D-Camphor to the Taxanes. Highly Concise Rearrangement-Based Approaches to Taxusin and Taxol.- Non-covalent Synthesis of Organic Nanostructures.- Recent Advances in the Synthesis of Carbohydrate Mimics.- Some New Aspects of Asymmetric Catalysis with Chiral Ferrocenyl Ligands.- Designer Lewis Acids for Selective Organic Synthesis.- Minisymposium on Combinatorial Chemistry.- Combinatorial Chemistry: Part of the Evolution in Drug Discovery.- Identification of Protease Inhibitors Using Biocompatible Resins and Library Synthesis.- Combinatorial Chemistry: The Enlistment and Application for Soluble Polymer Supports.- Two Approaches to Automated Solid Phase Synthesis of Small Organic Compound Arrays.- New Synthetic Methods.- New Trends in Electrophilic Amination: From Simple Achiral and Chiral Amines and Hydrazines to Advanced Materials.- The Atropisomer-Selective Synthesis of Biologically Active and Synthetically Useful Chiral Biaryls.- Radical Reactions Controlled by Lewis Acids.- Di-?-Methane Photorearrangement of 2,3-Disubstituted Benzobarrelenes and Benzonorbornadienes: Effect of Substituents of Opposite Polarity on the Regioselectivity and Synthesis of Benzopinane Skeleton.- Sight-Seeing the Metalated Flatlands. Carbanion-Mediated Strategies for Synthetic Aromatic Chemistry.- Iodonium Chemistry: More Than a Simple Mimicry of Some Transition Metal Based Organic Transformations.- Stereoselective Synthesis of ?Lactones and ?Alkylidene-Butenolides.- Stereoselective Synthesis.- Large Scale Catalytic Asymmetric Hydrogenation, an Industrial Perspective.- Camphor-Derived 2-Stannyl-N-Boc-l,3-Oxazolidine: ANew Versatile Chiral Formylanion Equivalent.- Effect of Counter-Cations on Aggregation and Chiral Discrimination: Application to Highly Diastereo- and Enantioselective Synthesis.- Catalytic Enantioselective Reactions of Aldimines Using Chiral Lewis Acids.- Sulfur Ylide Mediated Catalytic Asymmetric Epoxidation and Aziridination.- Stereoselective Alkylation of Chiral Glycine and Chiral-?-Aminipropionic Acid Derivatives in the Preparation of Enantiopure ?- and ?-Aminoacids.- Development and Application of Catalytic Highly Enantioselective Hetero-Diels-Alder Reactions of Aldehydes and Ketones.- Enantiopure Pyrroline-N-Oxides for the Synthesis of Pyrrolizine and Indolizine Alkaloids.- Novel Types of Chiral Catalysts for Asymmetric C-C Bond Formation Reactions.- Metal-Mediated Synthesis.- Recent Developments in Asymmetric Hydrogenation with Chiral Ru(II) Catalysts and Synthetic Applications to Biologically Active Molecules.- Enantio and Diastereoselective Addition of Organometallic Reagents to Aldehydes and Imines.- Some Recent Studies on the Development of New Metal Mediated Reactions for Organic Synthesis.- Stereoselective Routes to Conjugated Polyenes.- Alienes in Novel Palladium-Catalyzed and Acid-Mediated Cyclization Processes.- A Catalytic Tandem Addition Route to ?,?-Unsaturated Carbonyls.- Palladium Catalyzed New Benzannulation via Enynes.- Target Oriented Synthesis.- Chemistry and Biology of Calyculin C.- Synthesis of Cytotoxic Marine Macrolides: An Aldol-Based Approach to Spongistatin 1 (Altohyrtin A).- Synthesis of Heterocyclic Antitumor Compounds Using Alkine and Aryne Cycloadditions.- Prodigiosins—A New Family of Immunosuppressants: Novel and Efficient Synthesis.- Synthesis and Applications of Conformationally Constrained Phenylalanine Analogues.-Synthesis and Properties of Novel Functional Fullerene Derivatives.- Cobalt-Catalysed Synthesis of-?-Turn Mimics as Models for the Bioactive Conformation of HIV-1 Protease Inhibitors.- Stereoselective Synthesis of Trinems.