Recent Advances in Palladium-Catalyzed Cascade Cyclizations

The importance of palladium-catalyzed cross coupling reactions in contemporary organic synthesis is undisputed and underlined by the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2010. In addition to the highly efficient cross coupling reactions for single C-C bond construction, palladium-catalyzed cascade processes involving multiple bond formations have emerged in recent years as valuable tools for the rapid synthesis of complex molecular scaffolds. This review presents an overview of the most relevant developments in this field, with a focus on the generation of diverse poly- and heterocyclic scaffolds. The generally well understood reactivity of palladium has allowed the discovery of many intriguing novel cascade processes, and the creativity of the synthetic community will undoubtedly lead to many more discoveries in the future. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.