The preparation of substituted N‐arylisoindolines 3 from simple furan derivatives 1 is reported. Oxatricycloadducts 2, readily accessible by intramolecular Diels‐Alder reaction are susceptible to acidic reagents yielding aromatized products 3 by a ring‐opening reaction via intermediate carbocation.

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

Methoxy or nitro group present in the furan ring of tertiary alkenylfurfurylamine changes the expected results of both, the intramolecular [4+2]cycloaddition and the acid catalyzed ring-opening reaction of the derived oxatricycloadduct. With a 5-methoxy group, in addition to the expected 5-methoxyisoindoline 3, the corresponding hydroxy derivative 5 was obtained. On the other hand a 5-nitro group changes the outcome of the reaction even more profoundly. Instead of the expected 5-nitroisoindoline 12, 5-nitro-substituted epoxyisoindoline 6 submitted to ring-opening reaction with the mixture of hydrobromic and acetic acid, yielded the mixture of bromo-substituted epoxy compounds 7, 8, 9 and/or bromo-substituted isoindolines 10 and 11.