“…It should be noted that our approach of using aldol addition of a substituted benzaldehyde, followed by deoxygenation, rather direct alkylation of a benzylic halides was preferred due to the prior experiences of ourselves, and others, who have shown that direct alkylation of a highly electron-rich benzylic halides to be highly problematic and inconsistent. 21,22 Following this retrosynthetic plan, we herein report the synthesis of 1-3 for the first time and in addition, five unnatural lignan derivatives were also accessed using the same strategy by altering the aromatic substitutions with common lignan patterns.…”