“…8 As a part of our studies on the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of fluorine-containing bioactive compounds, 9 we recently reported a versatile procedure for a fluorocyclisation reaction of tryptamines 5 with N-fluoro-2, 4,6-trimethylpyridinium triflate (7), obtaining the corresponding 3a-fluoropyrrolo[2, 3-b]indoles 6 (Scheme 1). 10 Since the replacement of the 10b-hydroxy group of 1 with a fluorine would generate a useful analogue for understanding the biochemical behaviour of 1, we envisaged application of our fluorocyclisation reaction to the synthesis of the 10b-fluorinated analogue 3 of 1. However, unfortunately, after we started our synthesis of 3, de Lera and co-workers reported that in actuality, protubonine A is represented by 2 and has a 3S,5aR,10bR,11aS configuration.…”