The chemistry of mavacurane alkaloids: a rich source of bis-indole alkaloids

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

-mavacurine and pleiocarpamine. Their skeleton is defined by a bond between the indolic N1 nitrogen and the C16 carbon of the tetracyclic scaffold of the corynanthe group in MIA. A limited number of congeners is known as this skeleton can be considered as a cul-de-sac in main MIA biosynthetic routes. Thanks to the enhanced enamine-type reactivity, mavacuranes are frequently involved in the formation of multimeric MIA scaffolds. This review covers isolation aspects and synthetic approaches towards the mavacurane core and bisindole assemblies. To access the mavacurane core, only a few strategies are reported and the main synthetic difficulties usually originate from the important rigidity of the pentacyclic system. For the bisindole assemblies, biomimetic routes are privileged and deliver complex structures using smooth conditions.