Treat me gently: For a selective synthesis of the unusually sensitive cyclophanic α‐pyrone neurymenolide A, the chosen catalysts must be able to distinguish between six different sites of unsaturation, without scrambling any of the skipped π systems. This challenge was met with a new gold‐catalyzed pyrone synthesis in combination with a molybdenum‐catalyzed ring‐closing alkyne metathesis.
products with good enantioselectivity (ee = 73–90%) using a cinchona-based phase-transfercatalyst. α-Branched β-ynone esters possess a highly acidic α-proton and form their corresponding enolate as a single isomer, which allows the enantioselective fluorination reaction to occur under standard cinchona-based phase-transfercatalyst conditions. Moreover, the obtained α-fluorinated product can be treated