A short synthesis of 2,5-disubstituted dihydropyrans starting from D-mannitol as a chiral building block is described. Our synthetic approach combines ruthenium-catalyzed ring closing olefin metathesis and palladium-catalyzed nucleophilic substitution.
alpha-Hydroxy carbonyl compounds undergo smooth O-allylation using allylic carbonates and Pd(0) catalysts. This method has significant advantages over other O-allylation methods as it provides a solution to several problems previously observed for this synthetic transformation