Aspidophytine is an indole alkaloid that has attracted significant attention from synthetic chemists."Enantioselective Total Synthesis of Aspidophytine" He, F.; Bo, Y.; Altom, J. D.; Corey, E. J. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1999, 121(28), 6771–6772 ()"Stereocontrolled total synthesis of (−)-aspidophytine" Sumi, S.; Matsumoto, K.; Tokuyama, H.; Fukuyama, T. Tetrahedron 2003, 59, 8571–8587 ()"Application of the Rh(II) Cyclization/Cycloaddition Cascade for the Total Synthesis of (±)-Aspidophytine" Mejia-Oneto, J. M., Padwa, A. Org. Lett. 2006, 8, 3275–3278 ()"A Concise Asymmetric Total Synthesis of Aspidophytine" Nicolaou, K. C., Dalby, S. M., Majumder, U. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2008, 130(45), 14942–14943 () An extract of the cockroach plant, aspidophytine is an insecticidal substance particularly effective against cockroaches. It is one of the two components of the dimer haplophytine.Column: Totally Synthetic, by Paul Docherty, at the Royal Society of Chemistry; published October 9, 2009; retrieved October 3, 2014
In his suicide note, Harvard doctoral student Jason Altom mentioned his stress in attempting to devise a synthetic pathway for the aspidophytine sub-unit of haplophytine as a contributing factor to his psychological breakdown.Lethal Chemistry at Harvard, by Stephen S> Hall, in the New York Times; published November 29, 1998; retrieved October 3, 2014
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