Resin-bound intermediates prepared from polymer-supported amino acid esters, 2-nitrobenezenesulfonyl chlorides, and alcohols were used to synthesize 3-alkyl-3-(alkylamino) indolin-2-ones. The key step of the reaction sequence was the formation of a quaternary carbon via the base-mediated C-arylation of 2-nitrobenzenesulfonamides. The cleavage of the acyclic precursors from the resin and subsequent reduction of the nitro group by Zn in acetic acid triggered the spontaneous cyclization of the arylated compounds to indolinones. The synthesis was carried out using simple commercially available building blocks under mild conditions and provided the 3,3-disubstituted indolinone derivatives with good overall yields however, the arylation reaction resulted in the epimerization of the quaternary carbon.

We report two synthetic strategies for traceless solid-phase synthesis of molecular scaffolds comprising 6- to 8-membered rings fused with 5- to 7-membered rings. Traceless synthesis facilitated preparation of target molecules without any trace of polymer-supported linkers. The cyclization proceeded via acid-mediated tandem N-acylium ion formation followed by the nucleophilic addition of O- and C-nucleophiles. The presented synthetic strategy enabled, through the use of simple building blocks without any conformational preferences, the evaluation of the predisposition of different combinations of ring sizes to form fused ring molecular scaffolds. Compounds with any combination of [6,7 + 5,6,7] ring sizes were accessible with excellent crude purity. The 8-membered cyclic iminium was successfully fused only with the 5-membered cycle and larger fused ring systems were not formed, probably due to their instability.