This thesis is divided into three sections.
The first chapter presents a brief history of medicinal chemistry, and the potential of cyclobutane-containing alkaloids. It also covers the main types of mechanism and the major contributions to the obtention of cyclobutane derivatives with examples in the synthesis of natural products. Past works realised in the Craig group leading to the realisation of this work are also presented, as well as discussion surrounding the background of the project.
The second chapter covers our investigations into the addition of ketenes onto electron rich ene-sulfonamides and enol ethers, discussing the stereoselectivity observed.
The last chapter will present the experimental protocols followed and characterisation data