Sitolactone: A Valuable yet Overlooked Chiral Pool Material for Natural Product Synthesis

Abstract Sitolactone is an inexpensive, commercially available compound featuring a trans-hydrindane ring system fused to a δ-lactone. Despite its important applications in the pharmaceutical industry, this compound remains strikingly underexploited in natural product synthesis. In contrast to the widely used Hajos–Parrish ketone, only four total syntheses have employed sitolactone as a starting material. This account summarizes the background and synthetic applications of sitolactone, highlighting its considerable potential as a chiral pool material worthy of greater attention from the synthetic community.