Synthetic approaches to tetracyclic pyrrole imidazole marine alkaloids

Oroidin derived, pyrrole imidazole marine alkaloids (PIAs) are attractive targets for synthetic organic chemists because of their structural complexity and diversity, as well as their interesting biological activities. A number of efforts have been carried out to develop strategies for the synthesis of these natural products. Members of PIAs (eg., 2-7), which contain tetracyclic ring systems possessing characteristic cyclic guanidine or urea moieties, show significant biological activities including anticancer activity and agonistic activity against the adrenoceptor. In this review, investigations of the total synthesis of the representative tetracyclic PIAs, dibromophakellin (2) and dibromophakellstatin (3), are described.