Acid-catalyzed cascade approach to N-aryl-1,4-dihydropyridines

ORGN 538

Yan-Guang Wang, orgwyg@zju.edu.cn and Sun-Liang Cui. Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China
A novel, efficient and general synthesis of N-aryl-1,4-dihydropyridines via a trifluoacetic acid catalyzed cascade reaction between aromatic amines and 3-(2-formylphenoxy)-prop-2-enoates has been successfully developed. The reaction was performed under mild conditions and gave excellent yields. It is noteworthy that the products could be easily transformed into pharmaceutically interesting 1,4-dihydropyridines libraries. Furthermore it was also found that the enoate form products exhibit good fluorescence properties and three representative products were screened for their optical properties.