Latest Applications of the Diels-Alder Reaction in the Synthesis of Natural Products (2017-2020)

The Diels-Alder reaction has long established its high rank in the toolbox of any natural product chemist. The tremendous toleration of building blocks of various complexity and derivatization degree, as well as the enablement of furnishing six-membered rings with well-defined stereochemistry represents its main features and advantages. In recent years, many total syntheses of natural products relied at some point on the use of a [4+2]-cycloaddition step. Among classic approaches, several modifications of the Diels-Alder reaction, such as hetero-Diels-Alder reactions, dehydro-Diels-Alder reactions or domino-Diels-Alder reactions have been employed to extend the scope in the synthesis of natural products. Our review covers the application of the Diels-Alder reaction in natural product syntheses from 2017 to 2020, as well as selected methodologies which were inspired by, or could be used to access natural products.

Tom J. Mabry's Natural Products Chemistry Program: 1960–2007

This paper presents an overview of Dr. Mabry's accomplishments in his career as a natural product chemist, first at the University of Zürich as a post-doctoral fellow, and from 1962, as a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Botany until the late 1990s, when the Biological Sciences programs at UT-Austin were completely reorganized. From then until his retirement in 2006, he was a member of the Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology faculty.

Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, M. B. E., 19 October 1897 - 14 April 1994

Salimuzzaman Siddiqui must be one of the few scientific personalities of the twentieth century to lay genuine claim to being a true Renaissance man. His early university education was in philosophy, a subject for which he retained a lifelong passion. He wrote poetry and admired the work of great Urdu and Persian poets of the past. He remained enchanted by oriental and European classical music right up to the closing years of his long life. He was a significant practitioner of modern painting and could have made a name as an artist. Above all, he was a natural product chemist of the highest quality with the genius of isolating from the plants of the Indian subcontinent pharmacologically active compounds whose structures, when determined by others, were found to contain novel architectural features. Siddiqui was a gifted experimentalist, an immensely cultured and charismatic man.