“…Earlier, we developed a metal-free approach to 2-arylsubstitued pyrrolidine derivatives based on the acid-catalyzed intramolecular cyclization of N -(4,4-diethoxybutyl)ureas, leading to the formation of a pyrrolinium cation. Further Mannich-type reaction of this cyclic iminium ion with various electron-rich aromatic C -nucleophiles allowed us to obtain a range of 2-arylpyrrolidine-1-carboxamides [38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45]. The main benefits of this approach are the usage of easily accessible starting materials and its modularity, which allows wide variability in both the aromatic moiety and substituents at the nitrogen atom (Scheme 1).…”