Total Synthesis of Oxazolomycins

The oxazolomycin family of antibiotics, isolated from several Streptomyces strains, are intriguing molecules for synthesis due to their characteristic oxazole polyene lactam-lactone structures and significant antiviral, antibacterial, and antitumor biological activities. In the last ten years, we have been addressing synthetic problems to accomplish the total syntheses of neooxazolomycin and oxazolomycin A as well as the related antibiotics, inthomycins A, B, and C, which have truncated structures corresponding to the left-hand fragments. This account describes an overview of our synthetic efforts toward these natural products focusing on the strategies and methodologies we devised.