An enantioselective and diastereocontrolled approach to 8a-epi-d-swainsonine has been developed fromachiral furfural. The key step to this synthesis was a one-pot procedure for the hydrogenolytic removalof two protecting groups and two intramolecular reductive amination reactions. The absolute stereochemistry was introduced by asymmetric Noyori reduction of furfuryl ketone. This route relies ondiastereoselective palladium-catalyzed glycosylation to install the anomeric bond, and Luche reduction,diastereoselective dihydroxylation to set up the manno-stereochemistry of the indolizidine precursor.
