International audienceA copper-catalysed multicomponent coupling reaction between readily available (Z)-3-io-doacrylic acids, terminal alkynes, and primary amines was developed to smoothly access a small library of 5-hydroxy-1H-pyrrol-2(5H)-ones in good yields. This practical and general process was applied to a short-steps synthesis of the natural product pulchellalactam

This reviews surveys the preparation of a great diversity of complex biorelevant γ-lactam backbones thanks to scalable copper(I)-catalyzed cascade multicomponent processes.