“…The subsequent acylation (Y=alkyl) [85,123] or formylation (Y=H) [62,66,124,125] of 3 and 4 using the Vilmeier-Hack protocol (YCONMe 2 /POCl 3 ) finally yields 5,5'-diacyl (Y=alkyl) and 5,5'-diformyl substituted (Y=H) 2,2'-bipyrroles (2), which are the immediate precursors of 2,7,12,17-tetrasubstituted porphycenes (1, Y=H, R 2 =H), 2,3,6,7,12,13,16,17-octasubstituted porphycenes (1, Y=H) and 9,10,19,20-tetrasubstituted porphycenes (1, R 1 =R 2 =H). This methodology has been claimed to be of general applicability, and several patents [129][130][131][132][133][134][135][136] have been filed covering a wide range of substituents R 1 , R 2 , and Y. A search carried out in SciFinder Scholar 2006 revealed that the total number of porphycene structures included in Chemical Abstracts is 239, their substituents mainly being of alkyl type.…”