Direct intramolecular amination of tryptophan esters to prepare pyrrolo[2,3-b]indoles.

A metal-free iodine-catalyzed intramolecular amination has been developed for the practical synthesis of pyrrolo[2,3-b]indoles from readily available tryptophan esters. The transformation has been applied to a wide array of substrates and can be performed on gram scale under very mild conditions.