Catalytic cascades creating novel architecture for medicinal chemistry

The thesis comprises five chapters. Chapter one, the introduction, starts with a brief discussion of the more famous Pd catalysed reactions and their relevance to Pd as a catalyst in allene chemistry. The main part of the introduction reviews the recent work in Pd catalysed allene chemistry (formation of C-C, C-O and C-N bonds) and its importance in both synthetic and natural product syntheses. The second chapter “results and discussion” discusses the author own work including the selection of a broad series of novel substrates chosen to enable a wide range of multicomponent cascades to be designed. These cascades enable the combination of 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 substrates in a regio and stereoselective manner delivering novel products that enabled exploration of “biochemical space”. In all cases 1-4 Z-double bonds are created stereoselectively. These strategies are applied to the novel synthesis of potentially bioactive heterocycles including those derived from reactions of the rigid adamantyl tecton involving formation of eight new bonds. The third chapter “results and discussion” summarises preliminary work on 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition generating pyrimidinylpyrrolidine. The fourth chapter contains the experimental details of all new compounds.