Institute of Medicinal Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, PR CHlNA e-mail: wlu@ chem. emu. edu. cn 3, 5-bis (2-Cyanoisopropyl) toiuene (4) is a key intermediate for the preparation of anastrozole, an anti-tumor drug for the treatment of breast cancer. So far, the only synthetic route to 4 involves three steps from mesitylene (Scheme l). I* However, this patented approach suffers from low yield, ...
