Gold-Catalyzed Synthesis of Icetexane Cores: Short Synthesis of Taxamairin B and Rosmaridiphenol.

We report the short synthesis of two natural products, rosmaridiphenol and taxamairin B, from key intermediates 5a and 5b, which were prepared from enynals 8a and 9b, respectively, by using a gold-catalyzed cyclization reaction. This approach can be widely applied in the synthesis of [6,7,6]-fused tricyclic compounds found in many icetexane diterpenoids.