“…30 To overcome this, Wu et al, in 2023, realized the replacement of thiols with their oxidized products, disulfides, which are more stable and act as thiol surrogates under the reaction conditions. 31 On this note, dithiobenzaldehyde (14) was treated with aromatic bromoenal (13) in the presence of a reducing agent, PPh3, and an N-heterocyclic carbine (NHC) catalyst. Control experiments established the importance of water in this reaction as it took part in the generation of the sulfur anion (14a) from dithiobenzaldehyde (14) in a manner resembling the Corey-Nicolaou macro-lactonization pathway.…”