Shortly after our efforts had commenced, Nakahara et al. confirmed(4) the structure of 1 through total synthesis. Their synthesis is summarized in eq 1. Herein, we report our synthesis of cribrostatin 6 using an entirely different strategy. ... Retrosynthetic analysis (eq 2) suggested to us that 1 might be derived from biaryl 2 through an intramolecular dehydrative cyclization of the imidazole ring onto the neighboring aldehyde followed by an oxidation. Biaryl 2 was envisioned to ...
