A New Synthetic Route to Selected Indenones

Indenones are useful intermediates in the synthesis of several natural products, e.g. gibberellins (1) and steroid hormones with a C-nor-D-home system (2). Despite the nernerous methods for indenone synthesized, or the yields was much lower as mentioned in earlier reports (1)(4). One of the difficulties of the usual methods is the required electrophilic cyclization meta to a methoxyl substiruent. House (5) deals with these difficulties in more detail. In our method the synthesis of 6-methoxyinde-nones is effected by substitution dara to methoxyl function.