“…Recently, we have investigated the reactivity of the diterpenoid isosteviol (1), which can be easily prepared from an accessible natural raw material (the plant Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni 2 ). The attractive properties of this compound include 100% enantiomeric purity, a sufficiently high content in, and easy extraction from, the natural raw material, the presence of func tionalizable reactive groups, the conformational rigidity of the carbon skeleton, and the configurational stability of the chiral centers.…”