The rising demand for chiral raw materials, intermediates, and active ingredients in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, food additives, and fragrances provides the impetus for rapid developments in chiral technology. [1] It remains a huge challenge for organic chemists to develop highly enantiose-lective reactions for the preparation of enantiomerically pure compounds in a cost-effective manner. Lactams are a versatile motif in organic chemistry and when functionalized, lactams often either show biological activity themselves, or are important building blocks for biologically active molecules such as (þ)-a-allokainic acid, (þ)-a-kainic acid, [2] acromelic acid, [3] isopilocarpine, [4] and isocynometrine. [5] Generally, lactams are synthesized by intramolecular CÀN bond formation. However, this method for the synthesis of enantiomerically pure and functionalized lactams requires that the chiral centers and functional groups must be assembled in advance. Therefore, methodology that allows enantioselective carbon± carbon bond formation for the generation of functionalized lactams without presetting the chiral centers will be a significant advance in synthetic organic chemistry.The transition-metal-catalyzed intramolecular Alder-enetype reactions of enynes are well-developed [6] and provide efficient entries to a variety of useful functionalized carbocyclic [7] and heterocyclic compounds. [8] However, the number of lactam preparations reported involving the transition-metalcatalyzed cycloisomerization of enynes is limited. In fact, the literature contains only a single example describing a palladium-catalyzed cycloisomerization of alkynyl N-acyl enamines. [9] Very recently, a mechanistically different palladium(ii)-catalyzed synthesis of a-alkylidene-g-butyrolactams was reported. [10] Previously, we have discovered a Rhcatalyzed cycloisomerization of enynes and developed its asymmetric version. [11] Although this was a substrate-and ligand-dependent reaction, up to 96 % ee was achieved. [11b] This led us to consider strategies for expanding the scope of the reaction as well as improving the enantioselectivity. We report herein the results of this effort: in an efficient, mild, and general route to synthesize a variety of lactams in high enantioselectivity using a catalyst derived from a commercially available metal precursor [{Rh(cod)Cl} 2 ] and the ligand binap. [12] Initially, the reaction was studied with unprotected enyne amides (Scheme 1, R 3 ¼ H) as the cycloisomerization substrates. However, none of the desired cyclization products were detected and the starting materials were recovered. The negative results may be because the trans-isomer of this type of unprotected enyne amide is dominant, which would be unfavorable for the cycloisomerization (Scheme 1). [13] There-ZUSCHRIFTEN 4708