Abstract Enantioselective approaches to the construction of four complex building blocks of the structurally intricate marine macrolide known as spongistatin 1 are presented. The first phase of the synthetic effort relies on a practical approach to a desymmetrized, enantiomerically pure spiroketal ring system incorporating rings A and B. Concurrently, the C17–C28 subunit, which houses one-fifth of the stereogenic centers of the target in the ...