Seven commercially available microwave reactors designed for limited scale-up have been investigated using a highly reliable and robust reaction (the Newman-Kwart rearrangement). The use of a single reaction has enabled the comparison to be made across the range of different reactor types and scales. Overall, all reactors gave reliable scale-up from small scale, and performance equivalent to one another on large scale. A more detailed comparison between them is given in the concluding section.
Conjugate addition of lithium (S)-N-allyl-N-(α-methyl-p-methoxybenzyl)amide to methyl (E,E)-hepta-2,5-dienoate furnished the corresponding β-amino ester. N-Protecting group manipulation, ring-closing metathesis, and ester hydrolysis gave enantiopure [N(1')-tert-butoxycarbonyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridin-2'-yl]ethanoic acid. Subsequent iodolactonization gave a bicyclic iodolactone scaffold. This key intermediate was elaborated to (+)-pseudodistomin D [in >99% ee and 7% yield over 16 steps from methyl (E,E)-hepta-2,5-dienoate].
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