A novel silver-catalyzed ring-opening acylation of cyclopropanols and cyclobutanols is described. The reaction proceeds under mild and neutral conditions and provides a facile access to nonsymmetric 1,4- and 1,5-diketones in promising yields with broad substrate scope. Mechanistic studies including DFT calculations suggest the involvement of an uncommon water-assisted 1,2-HAT process, which is strongly exothermic and thus promotes addition of carbon radicals to aldehydes. In contrast to traditional reductive radical addition protocols, this work represents the first example of the intermolecular oxidative radical addition to aldehydes, thus offering a novel strategy for the direct synthesis of acyclic ketones from readily accessible aldehydes.

A practical one-pot synthetic strategy for the efficient synthesis of a range of structurally interesting and bioactive quinoline-based tetracycles has been developed. A key step in the synthesis is a tandem three-component reaction of heteroaromatic amine, methyl 2-formylbenzoate and (t)butyl isonitrile, followed by TFA-mediated lactamization via intramolecular aminolysis of an adjacent ester. Results related to a kinase-panel screening for several selected compounds are also discussed in this article.

A Cu-catalyzed cascade annulation of enynals with alkenyl or alkynyl α-bromocarbonyls for the synthesis of various cyclohexenone-fused polycyclic compounds is described.

Magnetically recyclable Hoveyda-Grubbs catalyst can be readily assembled using magnetic nanoparticles as support, and this catalyst combines convenient recyclability and excellent activity on ring-closing metathesis (RCM) reactions.