talaumidin (1). However, the preparation of opticallyactive (–)-2 requires a complicated synthetic route. To explore new neurotrophic compounds that can be obtained on a large scale, we established a short step synthetic route for talaumidin derivatives and synthesized fourteen analogues based on the structure of (–)-2. First, we synthesized a racemiccompound of (–)-2 (2a) and assessed its neurotrophic