Dynamic Strategic Bond Analysis Yields a Ten-Step Synthesis of 20-nor-Salvinorin A, a Potent κ-OR Agonist.
ACS central science December 27, 2017 Jeremy J Roach, Yusuke Sasano, Cullen L Schmid et al.
Deleting a single carbon atom (C20) from the complex plant metabolite salvinorin A stabilizes its molecular skeleton, simplifies its laboratory synthesis to just 10 steps, and preserves its high affinity and selectivity for the human kappa-opioid receptor. The work also introduces a general workflow for identifying structural changes that keep molecular complexity high while reducing synthetic complexity.