Synthesis of (+)-Hippospongic Acid A

Significance

Hippospongic acid A is one of the few known inhibitors of gastrulation (differentiation of cell layers in the development of multicellular organisms) and would be useful in the study of organism development. This compound also shows modest inhibition of DNA polymerase and DNA topoisomerase I/II and it is active against the human gastric cancer cell line NUGC-3. The synthesis outlined above used Pd-catalyzed allylic alkylation reactions to construct three bonds (C-S, C-H, and C-O).