A General Method for Palladium-Catalyzed Direct Carbonylation of Indole with Alcohol and Phenol

A novel strategy involving a first oxidative iodination and subsequent Pd⁰-catalyzed carbonylation to yield indole-3-carboxylate has been developed. It showed perfect generality to indole, alcohol, and phenol. The current methodology could also be conveniently applied to the synthesis of biologically active tropisetron from simple indole and tropine