Development of new asymmetric processes is one of the objectives of catalysis in organic chemistry. These processes can provide access to chiral building blocks applicable in syntheses of various natural substances that can be used for medical purposes. One such process is the preparation of chiral homoallyl alcohols, which have been used for syntheses of variety of biologically active compounds. In view of the aforementioned, suitably substituted homoallyl alcohols could be used as intermediates in syntheses of koibacins A-D, which have a number of interesting biological properties. Natural koibacins A-D are metabolites isolated from the marine cyanobacterium Oscillatoria sp. that exhibits selective antileishmanial activity and potent antïinflammantory properties. Our synthetic plan is focused on an approach through the allylation of aldehydes, esterification, ring closing metathesis and finally cross metathesis with different lipophilic fragments. Key words: enantioselective allylation, asymmetric synthesis, natural compounds, coibacins.

E-492, actinofuranone A, and JBIR-108 are natural compounds isolated from actinobacteria Streptomyces genus and can lead to the development of new pharmaceuticals as they have some biological interesting activities. Although the synthesis of these actinofuranones has been already published, this work brings new methods for the preparation of their fragments. The key step of the synthesis is enantioselective crotylboration of an aldehyde catalyzed by a chiral Brønsted acid and by which two centres of chirality are introduced in one step. The other crucial steps of the synthesis are composed of Ru-catalyzed alkene-alkene cross-metathesis and Pd- catalyzed Suzuki cross-coupling. Keywords: natural compound, enantioselective syntheses, crotylation, catalysis, actinofuranone fragment

The current methodologies of catalytic enantioselective allylation of aldehydes were studied on conjugated dienals and later on haloacrylaldehydes as the substrates. The resulting enantioenriched homoallylalcohols were prepared by reactions promoted either by commercial Brønsted acid catalysts or by Lewis base catalysts developed by our group, often with high enantio- and diastereoselectivities. Subsequently, the methodology was expanded on catalytic enantioselective crotylation and pentenylation reactions, practically unknown not only with these substrates. The applicability of this synthetic approach was demonstrated on preparation of several natural products or their intermediates.

Novel bis(tetrahydroisoquinoline) N,N'-dioxides 1,2 belong to the group of compounds with axial chirality that act as a Lewis base. These properties make them useful chiral catalysts in reactions such as allylation, opening of epoxides, etc. that exhibit high enantioselectivity. The prepared chiral bis(tetrahydroisoquinoline) N,N'-dioxides (R,Rax,R)-1, (R,Sax,R)-1, (Rax,R)-2 a (Sax,R)-2 were tested as catalysts in enantioselective allylation of variously substituted α,β−unsaturated aldehydes and dienals with allyltrichlorosilane (Scheme 1). All the catalysts exhibited high catalytic activity as well as high asymmetric induction (up to 96% for α,β- unsaturated aldehydes;1 up to 98 % for dienals). Appropriate choice of solvent as a reaction medium3,4 and substitution in α-position in aldehydes were the crucial factors for the successful course of the reaction. The catalytic activity of (R,Rax,R)-1 and (R,Sax,R)-1 was also tested in asymmetric opening of meso-epoxides with tetrachlorosilane (ee up to 69 %) (Scheme 2). N N O O O O 1 N N O O O 2 Scheme 1 Scheme 2 1) Vlašaná, K.; Hrdina, R.; Valterová, I.; Kotora, M. Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2010, 7040. 2) Kadlčíková, A.; Hrdina, R.; Valterová, I.; Kotora, M. Adv. Synth. Catal. 2009, 351,1279. 3) Hrdina, R.; Opekar, F.; Roithová, J.; Kotora, M. Chem. Commun....

In the diploma thesis, a method for preparation of the unsaturated C15-C20 tiacumicin fragment was developed. Tiacumicin is classified as a macrolidone antibiotic. Although three syntheses of tiacumicin have been recently published, this study has aimed to develop a novel pathway for its preparation utilizing catalytic reactions instead of stoichiometric ones. In the second part, an enantioselective allylation of (E)-3-jod-2-methylpropenal has been developed applying catalysis by a series of N,N'-dioxide catalysts. The asymmetric induction achieved in the allylation was up to 99% ee. This procedure allows relatively simple, straightforward and efficient preparation of wide range of natural products. Keywords tiacumicin, asymmetric synthesis, allylation, catalysis, chiral Lewis bases, organocatalysis