A journey towards natural licochalcone E: From isolation to asymmetric total synthesis

Due to the promising biological activities of licochalcone E first isolated from Glycyrrhiza inflate, several synthetic efforts have been made to obtain this valuable natural product in a large scale. In this issue, Cheon et al. (Liu et al., 2011) accomplished the stereoselective synthesis of (R)-(+)-licochalcone E. This report covers licochalcone E from isolation to the stereoselective total synthesis.