Biomimetic Assembly Lines Producing Natural Product Analogs: Strategies from a Versatile Manifold to Skeletally Diverse Scaffolds.

Biosynthetic assembly lines have evolved in nature, adopting divergent processes to produce a vast number of secondary metabolites. Inspired by these biogenetic processes, this account introduces recent investigations by my research group to formulate a synthetic strategy for establishing a biomimetic assembly line. With the aim not only to construct natural product-relevant scaffolds within 5-7 steps, but also to systematically diversify skeletal and stereochemical properties and functional groups, divergent synthetic processes exploiting a versatile manifold have been developed. This approach allows for cost-effective production of skeletally diverse and biologically active natural product analogs inaccessible by other means. Discovery of several lead candidates for a neglected tropical disease is a proof-of-concept of this synthetic approach.