Polycyclic fused indoles are ubiquitous in natural products
and
pharmaceuticals due to their immense structural diversity and biological
inference, making them suitable for charting broader chemical space.
Indole-based polycycles continue to be fascinating as well as challenging
targets for synthetic fabrication because of their characteristic
structural frameworks possessing biologically intriguing compounds
of both natural and synthetic origin. As a result, an assortment of
new chemical processes and catalytic routes has been established to
provide unified access to these skeletons in a very efficient and
selective manner. Transition-metal-catalyzed processes, in particular
from rhodium(III), are widely used in synthetic endeavors to increase
molecular complexity efficiently. In recent years, this has resulted
in significant progress in reaching molecular scaffolds with enormous
biological activity based on core indole skeletons. Additionally,
Rh(III)-catalyzed direct C–H functionalization and benzannulation
protocols of indole moieties were one of the most alluring synthetic
techniques to generate indole-fused polycyclic molecules efficiently.
This review sheds light on recent developments toward synthesizing
fused indoles by cascade annulation methods using Rh(III)-[RhCp*Cl2]2-catalyzed pathways, which align with the comprehensive
and sophisticated developments in the field of Rh(III)-catalyzed indole
functionalization. Here, we looked at a few intriguing cascade-based
synthetic designs catalyzed by Rh(III) that produced elaborate frameworks
inspired by indole bioactivity. The review also strongly emphasizes
mechanistic insights for reaching 1–2, 2–3, and 3–4-fused
indole systems, focusing on Rh(III)-catalyzed routes. With an emphasis
on synthetic efficiency and product diversity, synthetic methods of
chosen polycyclic carbocycles and heterocycles with at least three
fused, bridged, or spiro cages are reviewed. The newly created synthesis
concepts or toolkits for accessing diazepine, indol-ones, carbazoles,
and benzo-indoles, as well as illustrative privileged synthetic techniques,
are included in the featured collection.