A facile and efficient method for the synthesis of solasodine from diosgenin

A facile and high-yielding route for the synthesis of solasodine from diosgenin is devised. Ring opening of steroidal spiroketal under mild conditions with trifluoroacetyl trifluoromethanesulfonate (TFAT) provides an applicable protocol to prepare key intermediates 4 or 3-Ac-solasodine, which can potentially serve as a platform for the selective functionalization of C(3)–OH and N–H of solasodine. The simple operations without purification by column chromatography make this method suitable to scale up.