RESUMEN
(Hetero)biaryls are fundamental building blocks in the pharmaceutical industry and rapid access to these scaffolds is imperative for the success of numerous medicinal chemistry campaigns. Herein, a highly general, mild, and chemoselective reductive cross-electrophile coupling between (hetero)aryl iodides and heteroaryl bromides is reported. By employing more reactive (hetero)aryl halides, a broad range of successful substrates (45 examples) were identified. The reaction was also found to be chemoselective for C(sp2)-C(sp2) bond formation between (hetero)aryl iodides and bromides over (hetero)aryl chlorides, which were generally inert under the described reaction conditions. The efficiency of the procedure is also further demonstrated in parallel synthesis library format, on gram scale, as well as in the formal synthesis of Ruxolitinib, a potent JAK inhibitor. As such, we anticipate this method will find widespread utility in the assembly of (hetero)biaryls for medicinal chemistry efforts.
RESUMEN
The first example of cobalt-catalyzed oxidative C-H/C-H cross-coupling between two heteroarenes is reported, which exhibits a broad substrate scope and a high tolerance level for sensitive functional groups. When the amount of Co(OAc)2 â 4 H2 O is reduced from 6.0 to 0.5â mol %, an excellent yield is still obtained at an elevated temperature with a prolonged reaction time. The method can be extended to the reaction between an arene and a heteroarene. It is worth noting that the Ag2 CO3 oxidant is renewable. Preliminary mechanistic studies by radical trapping experiments, hydrogen/deuterium exchange experiments, kinetic isotope effect, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) suggest that a single electron transfer (SET) pathway is operative, which is distinctly different from the dual C-H bond activation pathway that the well-described oxidative C-H/C-H cross-coupling reactions between two heteroarenes typically undergo.