Synthetic studies on the furan ring of wortmannin

Synthetic studies on the fungal metabolite, wortmannin, were undertaken in an effort to gain insight into the structure activity relationships of wortmannin analogs on phosphatidylinositol-3′-kinase (PI-3-kinase). Our work has focused on the chemistry of the previously unexplored furan ring and has uncovered several interesting and novel chemical transformations, which are described herein.