Recent advances on the synthesis of natural pyrrolizidine alkaloids: alexine, and its stereoisomers

Natural products have attracted the interest of the scientific community due to their importance and application. Alexine is a naturally polyhydroxylated pyrrolizidine alkaloid that is broadly found in plant sources and isolated from Alexa leiopetala. The biological properties such as glycosidase inhibitors, anti-virus, and anti-HIV activities, makes it interesting target for synthetical studies. This review reports different approaches and methodologies to the synthesis of alexine, and its stereoisomers as the target compounds in numerous studies. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text]