Aziridination reactions represent a powerful tool in aziridine synthesis. Significant progress has been achieved in this field in the last decades, whereas highly functionalized aziridines including 3-arylated aziridine-2-carbonyl compounds play an important role in both medical and synthetic chemistry. For the reasons listed, in the current review we have focused on the ways to obtain 3-arylated aziridines and on the recent advances (mainly since the year 2000) in the methodology of the synthesis of these compounds via aziridination.

N,N-Dimethylaziridine-2-carboxamides react with organolithium reagents yielding 2-aziridinylketones. The reaction with one equivalent of organolithium compound is selective to amide carbonyl at a low (−78 °C) temperature. These ketones, in reaction with organolithium reagents, give symmetrical and unsymmetrical aziridinyl carbinols. The usage of excess phenyllithium may serve as a special N-Boc-protecting group cleavage method for acid-sensitive substrates.

Highly functionalized aziridines, including compounds with aromatic moieties, are attractive substrates both in synthetic and medical areas of chemistry. There is a broad and interesting set of synthetic methods for reaching these compounds. Aziridination represents the most explored tool, but there are several other more specific, less well-known, but highly promising approaches. Therefore, the current review focuses on recently described or updated ways to obtain 3-arylated aziridines via different non-aziridination-based synthetic methods, reported mainly since 2000. The presented methods belong to two main directions of synthesis, namely, cyclization of open-chain substrates and rearrangement of other heterocycles. Cyclization of open-chain substrates includes the classic Gabriel-Cromwell type cyclization of halogenated substrates with amines, base-promoted cyclization of activated aminoalcohols (or its analogues), and the oxidative cyclization of β-dicarbonyls. Rearrangements of other heterocycles are presented as the Baldwin rearrangement of 4-isoxazolines, the cycloaddition of 1.3-dipoles or dienes to 2H-azirines, and the addition of C- and N-nucleophiles to the double bond of azirines.