Asymmetric Dehydration of β -Styryl- β -hydroxy Esters and Application to the Synthesis of a Neoflavonoid

The effective kineticresolution of β-hydroxy esters prompted us to investigatethe asymmetric dehydration of β-styryl-β-hydroxy esters inmore detail. Herein we describe our recent progress tooptimize reaction conditions and to extend the scope of themethodology to various β-styryl substituents. Also, appli-cation of this methodology to the preparation of anenantioenriched neoflavonoid is presented.We have found that chiral ligand