Aspergiolides A and B: Core Structural Establishment and Synthesis of Structural Analogues.

The core structure of marine natural products aspergiolides A (1a) and B (1b) was achieved via a concise, two-step procedure with satisfactory yield. Based on this protocol, a natural products mimic library containing 25 structural simplified analogues of 1a was then constructed. Several prepared analogues showed potential cytotoxic activity against five different tumor cell lines, and compound 7bb, in particular, exhibited cytotoxicity comparable to that of 1a.