“…The increasing importance of asymmetric synthesis leads to a greater demand for chiral building blocks; however, the preparation of optically active ketones 1 − 5 has not yet been reported in the literature. In addition to the conventional methods, the recently introduced transition metal-catalyzed or -mediated carbonylative cyclization of enynes provides an attractive method for preparing a variety of bicyclic ketones, − including optically active ones. 4a,g,6b However, this process does not appear to be suitable for the preparation of the above ketones, because the cyclization of 1,1-disubstituted olefinic substrates, which are precursors for the angularly substituted ketones, usually requires the presence of substituents to the tether portion (i.e., steric promotion; for example, the assistance by the Thorpe−Ingold effect) to achieve good yields. 4d, To find a viable solution, we reexamined our tandem cyclization of 2,7-enynoates with a titanium(II) alkoxide as shown in eq 1, but this time, we chose substrates having a trisubstituted olefin. More importantly, the replacement of the ester portion of the substrate with an appropriate chiral auxiliary led us to develop an asymmetric synthesis of 1 − 5 with high enantiomeric purity.…”