“…In our first experiment, this substrate did not react with imidazole (2a) in toluene at reflux within 24 h, with or without azeotropic distillation, and the starting materials were completely recovered (Table 2, entry 1). Moreover, the addition of additives to the previous reaction mixture, such as DMAP [24][25][26]31] or molecular sieves 4 Å, commonly used to mediate nucleophilic allylic substitutions, did not lead to a notable improvement of the reaction outcome (Table 2, entries 2 and 3). However, the use of DABCO, commonly used as a powerful catalyst or a nucleophilic additive in the reaction of acyclic MBH adducts with various nucleophiles [21,[34][35][36][37], did not afford the S N 2/S N 2' products but provided the 1,4-adduct 8a in 84% yield (Table 2, entry 4).…”