Easily accessible N-ethoxycarbonyl-2-alkynylindoles undergo, in the presence of primary aryl amines and under TiCl 4 / t-BuNH 2 catalysis, domino hydroamination-annulation reactions giving rise to pyrimido [1,6-a]indolones in good to excellent yields. The reaction involves an initial highly regio-and chemoselective hydroamination reaction. The obtained compounds show interesting fluorescence properties and could represent a new class of useful markers for bioanalytical purpose.Domino reactions are now widely used to assemble simple or polyfunctionalized organic molecules. 1 Thus, domino reactions allow the formation of several new covalent bonds in a one-pot fashion, can accomplish the coupling of three or more simple building blocks in a modular approach, and, in several cases, match well also with Trost's atom-economy concept. 2 Moreover, they offer an attractive, economical, and ecologically benign alternative to classical organic transformations. In this context, transition-metal catalysis has proven to play a pivotal role for the direct construction of complicated heterocyclic and heteropolycyclic molecules from readily accessible starting materials under mild conditions. During the last years, we focused our attention on the catalyzed and uncatalyzed domino addition-annulation reactions of 2-acyl-N-propargylindoles and 2-acyl-3-alkynyl(or propargyl)indoles for the synthesis of a-or bfused polycyclic indole systems, respectively. Thus, using this synthetic approach, b-carbolines, 3 pyrazino[1,2-a]-indoles, 4 [1,4]oxazino[4,3-a]indoles, 5 pyrrolo[1,2-a]indol-2-carbaldehydes, 6 1-aminocarbazoles, 7 and 9-amino-pyrido[1,2-a]indoles 7 have been obtained. Most of the reported reactions 3-5,7 involve in the second step, step b of the domino reaction, a nucleophilic attack onto a carbon-carbon triple bond that allows the annulation onto an existing ring (Figure 1, A). Furthermore, we reversed the sequence by performing a domino reaction involving in the first step, step a, a TiCl 4 /t-BuNH 2 -catalyzed hydroamination of the carbon-carbon triple bond followed by nucleophilic attack of the enamine intermediate at the carbon-oxygen double bond (Figure 1, B). 6
Figure 1During recent years, catalyzed hydroamination reactions became a valuable tool for the synthesis of nitrogen heterocycles and complex molecules. 8 Among various catalysts employed, titanium-based catalysts are particularly attractive in terms of costs, functional group tolerability, and regioselectivities. 9 In particular, the inexpensive and user-friendly TiCl 4 /t-BuNH 2 catalytic system has been described for the regioselective intermolecular antiMarkovnikov hydroamination of alkynes. 10 N-Ethoxycarbonyl-2-alkynylindoles 2a-g were synthesized in excellent yields starting from 2-trifluoromethanesulfonyloxy-indole-1-carboxylic acid ethyl ester (1) and terminal alkynes following the Sonogashira protocol (Table 1). 11On these bases, we investigated a domino sequence involving hydroamination-annulation of N-ethoxycarbonyl-2-alkynylindoles with primary amin...