Oseltamivir phosphate (Tamiflu) Pt. 5
Shibasaki, Yamatsugu, Yin, Kamijo, Kimura and Kanai. ACIEE, 2008, EarlyView. DOI: 10.1002/anie.200804777. 
A fifth appearance for my favourite drug ‘interloper’ in to this natural-product space; alarm bells shouldn’t be ringing - just cause I work in pharma doesn’t mean I’ve turned my back on natural products! Tamiflu is of course based on a natural product, shikimic acid - the starting point for the original synthesis. But as natural sources go, it’s rather hard to get hold of, and thus damned pricey (£248 for 5g on SA just now). Other routes used involved chemistry that was perhaps a mite ‘tetchy’ on scale, such as azides and aziridines. A few years
Cortistatin Pt. III
Shair, Lee, and Nieto-Oberhuber, JACS, 2008, ASAP. DOI: 10.1021/ja8071918. 
A third showing for everybodies favourite androstane, this offering from Matt Shair adds to the quantity of inovative chemistry used in it’s contruction. As a quick reminder, first up was Phil Baran, back in May; then came Nicolaou and Chen in August - along with several ’studies towards papers’. However, rather than my going through it all again, have a look at this excellent review by Stefan Bräse which was in ACIEE last month.
If you read it through, you’ll notice Nicolaou’s use of the Hajos-Parrish ketone (the synthesis of which I discussed in my post on that work); Shair
