Recent interest in anthracyclines2 is due to the useful antitumor activity which they possess and has stimulated the development of new routes to related systems and regiospecific synthesis of unsymmetrically substituted anthraquinones, which could be used as intermediates or synthetic models for anthracyclinones. The use of 3-hydroxy-2-pyrone (1) as a diene in the Diels-Alder reaction, reported by Corey et al., 3 could be
