Research Projects

Nitrogen heterocycles are a structural component of a large number of biologically active natural, non-natural compounds and many drug molecules. Synthesis of diversely substituted heterocycles has been a research objective for over a century, and a variety of well-established methods are available in the literature. The majority of previously reported strategies requires alkyne/diazo substrate for the synthesis of N-heterocycles; which restrict the diversity in the synthesized compounds. Although a number of modified methods under improved conditions have been reported, many of them suffer from drawbacks such as unsatisfactory yields, poor substrate tolerance, difficult-to-obtain starting materials, and the use of stoichiometric or relatively expensive reagents. Therefore, search for direct, more facile and practical synthetic routes to fused heterocycles is still highly desirable. In this proposed project we have designed a general synthetic strategy for the construction of a large number of diversely substituted N-heterocycles, drug/natural-product-like scaffolds in one go from easily accessible o-aryldicarbonyls and amines under mild reaction conditions.