With the chiral building block
12 secured, we turned our attention to the linkage of
12 with an indole motif (
Scheme 4). Direct
N-alkylation of lactam
12 with
β-indolyl electrophiles proved challenging due to the instability of the latter under basic conditions. This problem was also encountered by Stoltz
et al. in their recent synthesis of (+)-eburnamonine [
46], who ultimately employed a stepwise approach to introduce the indole moiety. In our hand, after extensive experimentation, we were delighted to observe that tosylate
13 was a capable substrate to react with lactam
12 using NaH in THF at 60 ℃ to give the desired product
19 in 89% yield [
68]. Removal of the tosyl group at the indole N-atom in
19 through treatment with Mg/MeOH yielded
9. At this stage, the key Bischler-Napieralski cyclization/iminium reduction sequence of amide
9 was explored. Subjecting
9 to 2-F-pyridine and Tf
2O in CH
2Cl
2 smoothly generated the iminium intermediate
11 (
Scheme 2) [
69-
72]. After screening various reduction conditions (NaBHEt
3, NaBH(OAc)
3, NaBH
3CN, DIBAL-H, l-selectride, LDBBA, H
2/Pd-C,
etc.), we found that the use of LiAlH(O
t-Bu)
3 at −78 ℃ furnished the tetracyclic product
10 with the optimal diastereoselectivity (dr = 11:1) in 82% yield over two steps. The above transformation (
9 to
10) was easily conducted on a 4 g scale, which delivered the key intermediate
10 with requisite
cis-C20/C21 stereochemistry in gram quantity with enhanced enantiomerical purity (99.7%
ee) after recrystallization with acetone/water (4:1). Next, removal of the acetal group in
10 followed by oxidation of the resulting hemiaminal (structure not shown) according to Iwabuchi's method [
73] produced lactam
20, a known precursor to (+)-vincamine [
32]. Davis oxidation of
20 installed the C17-OH group and delivered hydroxyl lactam
22 [
59]. Finally, MnO
2-mediated oxidation of
22 and subsequent NaOMe-promoted rearrangement afforded (+)-vincamine (
1) in 65% yield over two steps [
26].