De Novo Assembly of Highly Substituted Morpholines and Piperazines

The morpholine and piperazine with their remarkable physical and biochemical properties are popular heterocycles in organic and medicinal chemistry used in rational property design. However, in the majority of cases these rings are added to an existing molecule in a building block approach thus limiting their substitution pattern and diversity. Here we introduce a versatile de novo synthesis of the morpholine and piperazine rings using multicomponent reaction chemistry. The large scale amenable building blocks can be further substituted at up to four positions, making this a very versatile scaffold synthesis strategy. Our methods thus fulfill the increasing demand for novel building block design and nontraditional scaffolds which previously were not accessibl