Activating Imides with Triflic Acid: A General Intramolecular Aldol Condensation Strategy Toward Indolizidine, Quinolizidine, and Valmerin Alkaloids

A simple, inexpensive, step economic, and highly modular synthetic strategy to access izidine alkaloids is described. The key step is a TfOH-promoted intramolecular aldol condensation between enol and cyclic imide moieties. This cyclization strategy can be employed within an aza-Robinson annulation framework and represents a general tool to build fused bicyclic amines. To illustrate the power of this method, we describe the preparation of (+/-)-coniceine, (+/-)-quinolizidine, (+/-)-tashiromine, (+/-)-epilupinine, and the core of (+/-)-valmerins