Concise Approach to the “Higher Sugar” Core of the Nucleoside Antibiotic Hikizimycin

A highly productive synthesis of phenylthio glycoside 33 is described which constitutes a fully functional surrogate for the hikosamine core of hikizimycin 1 , a complex nucleoside antibiotic endowed with promising anthelmintic properties. The chosen approach to this undecose derivative starts from mannofuranose 7 which was one‐carbon homologated to alkyne 8 in one step on treatment with lithio (trimethylsilyl)diazomethane. Alkynyl iodide 12 derived from 8 was combined with the tartrate‐derived aldehyde 17 by a Nozaki–Hiyama–Kishi reaction that can either be performed using overstoichiometric amounts of CrCl 2 or by means of a catalytic manifold based on the turnover of a cat. CrCl 2 /chlorosilane/manganese redox couple. Semi‐hydrogenation of the resulting alkyne 18 to ( Z )‐olefin 19 required the use of Pd/C as the catalyst, whereas conventional Lindlar reduction was unsatisfactory. Attempted cis ‐dihydroxylation of alkene 22 (formed from 19 by a Mitsunobu reaction with phthalimide) by using catalytic amounts of OsO 4 and NMO as the stoichiometric oxidant essentially failed, whereas a stoichiometric osmylation afforded the stable osmate ester 26 a as a single diastereomer. Since the use of OsO 4 in stoichiometric amounts deemed inappropriate for a total synthesis project, recourse was taken to catalytic “Blitz dihydroxylation” with RuO 4 in the presence of FeCl 2 ⋅ 4 H 2 O as co‐catalyst. Application of these conditions to alkene 30 bearing a free aldehyde function at the terminus of the “higher sugar” chain furnished pyranose 32 in good yield and excellent diastereoselectivity, which was converted into the targeted thioglycoside 33 on treatment with PhSSPh/Et 3 P. It is particularly noteworthy that the conformational constraints of the acyclic substrate 30 enforce the dihydroxylation to violate Kishi's empirical rule for transformations of this type.