Cascade reaction based synthetic strategies targeting biologically intriguing indole polycycles

Area of Science:

• Organic Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Synthetic Chemistry

Background:

• Indole polycycles are prevalent scaffolds in biologically active natural products and synthetic compounds.
• Developing efficient synthetic routes to complex indole polycycles remains a significant challenge in organic chemistry.
• Cascade reactions offer a powerful strategy for rapid molecular complexity construction, minimizing purification steps.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review and summarize recent advancements in cascade reaction-based synthetic strategies for indole polycycles.
• To highlight the efficiency and advantages of cascade reactions in accessing complex indole frameworks.
• To showcase biologically relevant and natural product-inspired indole structures synthesized via cascade reactions.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of cascade reaction methodologies applied to indole polycycle synthesis.
• Analysis of synthetic designs focusing on sequential reactions within a single pot.
• Categorization of reported methods based on the targeted indole polycyclic structures.

Main Results:

• A growing number of cascade reaction-based approaches have been developed for indole polycycle synthesis.
• These methods demonstrate high efficiency in building molecular complexity and reducing synthetic steps.
• Several biologically intriguing and natural product-inspired indole frameworks have been successfully accessed.

Conclusions:

• Cascade reactions represent a highly effective strategy for the synthesis of complex indole polycycles.
• The continued development of these methods promises to accelerate the discovery of novel biologically active compounds.
• This review provides valuable insights into state-of-the-art synthetic approaches for indole polycycle construction.