Expeditious Approaches to Polysubstituted Tetrahydrofurans, Butanolides and Cyclopropanes Bearing Functionalized Substituents

Polysubstituted tetrahydrofurans, butanolides and cyclopropanes are structural subunits of a large number of biologically interesting natural products. They can also be used for stereo-controlled construction of complex functionalized acyclic or macrocyclic molecules. We describe here efficient approaches to these classes of compounds involving (in most cases) multiple bond formation in a single laboratory operation. All reactions described here are stereospecific and afford the cyclic molecules having chemodifferenciable substituents.