Ni-catalyzed ligand-controlled divergent and selective synthesis

Scaffold diversity is a key feature of a compound library and plays a pivotal role in its success in biological screening. Therefore, it is highly desirable to develop efficient strategies to rapidly construct structurally distinct and diverse “privileged” molecular scaffolds, thereby giving rise to compound libraries with selective and differing biological activities. This review covers recent efforts in this emerging field of Ni-catalyzed divergent and selective synthesis, and will focus on reactions using the same substrate to generate structurally diverse molecular scaffolds by varying the ligand backbone under otherwise almost identical reaction conditions. We hope that the field will be encouraged by the progress achieved, drawing attention to the design and development of new selective catalytic systems, and revealing new modes of catalytic transformation for broader synthetic applications. [graphic not available: see fulltext]