Organic Reactions, Volume 76

Book excerpt: Volume 76 in the venerable Organic Reactions series comprises three chapters that cover the ever-increasing emphasis of transition metal catalysis in organic synthesis. These three chapters represent some of the most important transformations that enable the construction of carbon-carbon bonds, heterocycles and carbon-heteratom bonds. This volume features a comprehensive treatment of transition metal (palladium, nickel, copper) catalyzed a-arylation of enolates derived from many common functional groups such as ketones, aldehydes, esters and nitriles (Prim, Marque, Gaucher, Campagne) including enantioselective variants; palladium catalyzed cyclization to form indoles (Cacchi, Fabrizi, Goggiamani) one of the most prevalent and important classes of heterocycles in natural products and pharmaceutical agents; and an overview of a newly developed dihydroxylation reaction of alkenes (Donohoe, Bataille, Innocenti) that uses hydrogen bonding interactions to direct the delivery of an osmium catalyst with high selectivity. As with all Organic Reactions chapters, these reviews emphasize the preparative aspects of the featured transformation and contain comprehensive compilations of all known examples in the tables.