“…The U-5C-4CR has been recently used by Dawidowski (Dawidowski et al, 2012 ) to prepare 2,6-diketopiperazines B starting from proline as aminoacid component, exploiting an intramolecular transamidation between the primary amido group deriving from the cleavage of the tert -butyl isocyanide side-chain and the methyl ester group generated during the multicomponent step (Scheme 2 ). In our hands, when the carbonyl component of the multicomponent step was a ketone, cyclization of A to imide C partially occurred during the Ugi reaction, even on the secondary amide deriving from unhindered isocyanides (Scheme 2 ; Dawidowski et al, 2014 ). With the aim to expand the scope of this chemistry, and due to overexploited synthesis of diketopiperazine libraries for biological applications (Perrotta et al, 2001 ; Fischer, 2003 ), we envisioned the possibility to further elaborate structures C , through a set of transformations amenable to afford original scaffolds, in optically pure form, with additional reactive groups amenable of selective functionalizations.…”