Mechanistically guided survey of enantioselective palladium-catalyzed alkene functionalization

Palladium-catalyzed alkene functionalization was discovered more than 60 years ago and is now a commonly used strategy for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and materials. The development of asymmetric variants of this reaction is described in this short review. The review is organized around the mechanistic challenges that have hampered the development of these transformations for various substrate classes, as well as the strategies, ligand classes, and additives that have been introduced to overcome them. New methodologies for Heck, oxidative Heck, dehydrogenative Heck, and Wacker-type reactions are highlighted, with a special focus on the progression from cyclic to acyclic to electronically unbiased olefin substrates.