No abstract

Ap ractical andn ovel process for the decarboxylative fluorination of b-ketoacidsi nw ater in the presenceo fp hase transfer catalyst has been developed, affording as eries of a-fluoroketones in good to excellent yields.F urthermore,apreliminary investigation for the catalytic asymmetric transformation was performed and ap roposed mechanistic pathway for this catalytic process was proposed.

A novel rapid synthesis of indoles from N-Ts-2-alkenylanilines has been described; the reaction involves a NIS-mediated cascade C-N bond formation/aromatization, and a series of indoles with various functional groups have been synthesized in good to excellent yields under mild conditions without any other additives or catalysts.

A facile asymmetric synthesis of fluorinated 3-hydroxyoxindoles through the biomimetic decarboxylative aldol reaction of fluorinated b-keto acids with unprotected isatins catalyzed by quininederived urea catalyst has been achieved. One of the features of this work is that the easily available a, adifluoro/a-monofluoro-b-keto acids have been first applied in the enantioselective synthesis of fluorinated compounds as the masked fluoroenolates. Furthermore, the utility of this method was demonstrated by its ability to access a series of difluorinated 3-hydroxyoxindoles with up to 95% ee and monofluorinated 3hydroxyoxindoles with up to 90 : 10 d.r. and 94% ee.