“…[1] In particular, enantiopure five-membered spirocyclic oxindoles have attracted tremendous attention owing to their diverse bioactivities and structural complexity.T he key challenge for the construction of such structures lies in the formation of multiple stereocenters,p articularly for those containing two adjacent quaternary centers.T herefore,n ew strategies for the synthesis of such spirocyclic oxindoles [2] with high levels of efficiency and selectivity from readily available starting materials are always in great demand.In the past few years,elegant advances have been made in the development of enantioselective syntheses of five-membered spirocyclic oxindoles. [3] In 2007, Tr ost [4] and co-workers disclosed ap alladium-catalyzed [3+ +2] cycloaddition for the assembly of such compounds.A side from transition-metal catalysis,o rganocatalytic cascade reactions provide an alternative powerful strategy for the preparation of spirocyclic oxindoles.A fter [3+ +2] cycloadditions catalyzed by chiral tertiary phosphines [5] or amines [6] had been reported, hydrogen bond donor catalyzed cascade reactions, [7] Michael-Michael reactions promoted by primary [8] or secondary amines, [9] NHC-catalyzed processes, [10] as well as alkylations mediated by phase transfer catalysts (PTCs) [11] were developed. More recently,s ynergistic catalysis [12] and CÀHb ond oxygenation [13] were also applied to the asymmetric construction of five-membered spirocyclico xindoles.Inspired by our ongoing interest in the development of reactions towards spirocyclico xindoles [14] and previous work on nitrosoarenes, [15] we hypothesized that the addition of b-dicarbonyl compounds to nitrosoarenes followed by aMichael-Mannich sequence in the presence of abifunctional catalyst would be an appropriate strategy to prepare enantioenriched spirocyclico xindoles (Scheme 1d).…”