Copper/ruthenium relay catalysis enables 1,6-double chiral inductions with stereodivergence.

The dual catalysis strategy is an efficient and powerful tool to fulfill the stereodivergent synthesis of stereoisomeric products from the same set of starting materials. Great attention has been given to the construction of chiral compounds with two contiguous stereocenters. However, the synthesis of two remote noncontiguous stereocenters is more challenging and is less developed, despite the high demand for synthetic tactics.

Organocatalytic atroposelective synthesis of axially chiral ,'-pyrrolylindoles indole formation.

The first organocatalytic atroposelective synthesis of axially chiral ,'-pyrrolylindoles based on -alkynylanilines was successfully established indole formation catalyzed by chiral phosphoric acid (CPA). This new synthetic strategy introduced CPA-catalyzed asymmetric 5- cyclization of new well-designed -alkynylanilines containing a pyrrolyl unit, resulting in a wide range of axially chiral ,'-pyrrolylindoles in high yields with exclusive regioselectivity and excellent enantioselectivity (up to 99% yield, >20 : 1 rr, 95 : 5 er). Considering the potential biological significance of N-N atropisomers, preliminary biological activity studies were performed and revealed that these structurally important ,'-pyrrolylindoles had a low IC value with promising impressive cytotoxicity against several kinds of cancer cell lines.

Enantio- and diastereodivergent synthesis of fused indolizines enabled by synergistic Cu/Ir catalysis.

Highly diastereo-/enantioselective assembly of 2,3-fused indolizine derivatives could be easily available through a cascade allylation/Friedel-Crafts type reaction enabled by a synergistic Cu/Ir catalysis. This designed protocol provides an unprecedented and facile route to enantioenriched indolizines bearing three stereogenic centers in moderate to high yields with excellent stereoselective control, which also featured broad substrate generality. Remarkably, four stereoisomers of the 2,3-fused indolizine products could be efficiently constructed in a predictable manner through the pairwise combination of copper and iridium catalysts.

Base-promoted cascade β-F-elimination/electrocyclization/Diels-Alder/retro-Diels-Alder reaction: efficient access to δ-carboline derivatives.

A serendipitous and highly efficient approach for the construction of a variety of δ-carboline derivatives was developed through base-promoted cascade β-F-elimination/electrocyclization/Diels-Alder/retro-Diels-Alder reaction of -2,2,2-trifluoroethylisatin ketoimine esters with alkynes in good to high yields with excellent regio-/chemoselectivity control. Moreover, a reasonable reaction pathway was proposed, which was in accordance with the prepared reaction intermediate and control experiment results. The δ-carboline product could be easily converted into a new chiral Py-box-type ligand through simple synthetic transformations.

Efficient access to chiral dihydrobenzoxazinones Rh-catalyzed hydrogenation.

Rh/()-DTBM-SegPhos-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation of prochiral ()-2-(2-oxo-2-benzo[][1,4]oxazin-3(4)-ylidene)acetate esters was successfully developed. A series of chiral dihydrobenzoxazinones were prepared through this efficient methodology with good to excellent results (up to >99% conversion, 93% yield and >99% ee), which are important motifs in the biologically active molecules.