Late-stage
diversification of natural products is an efficient
way to generate natural product derivatives for drug discovery and
chemical biology. Benefiting from the development of site-selective
synthetic methodologies, late-stage diversification of natural products
has achieved notable success. This outlook will outline selected examples
of novel methodologies for site-selective transformations of reactive functional groups and inert C–H
bonds that enable late-stage diversification of complex natural products.
Accordingly, late-stage diversification provides an opportunity to
rapidly access various derivatives for modifying lead compounds, identifying
cellular targets, probing protein–protein interactions, and
elucidating natural product biosynthetic relationships.