“…In this context, natural (+)-lentiginosine, isolated in 1990 from the leaves of Astragalus lentiginosus , was found to be a potent and selective inhibitor of the fungal α-glucosidase, amyloglucosidase, while recent results showed that the nonnatural enantiomer (−)-lentiginosine acts as an apoptosis inducer on tumor cells of a different origin . On this ground, many syntheses of lentiginosine have been described, and apart from a few enantioselective procedures, most of them are based on chiral pool starting materials. ,5b Nevertheless, after the first approach of Shibasaki and co-workers starting from a dihydropyridone derivative, some processes exploiting suitably functionalized nonchiral pyridines as precursors have been reported for the synthesis of natural (+)-lentiginosine, swainsonines, benzo-fused hydroxyindolizidines, and more recently (−)-lentiginosine and its epimers . On the whole, the synthesis of indolizidine derivatives from pyridines is quite sparse, and only a few examples have been reported …”