Palladium-Catalysed Synthesis and Transformation of Quinolones

Palladium-catalysed reactions have had a large impact on synthetic organic chemistry and have found many applications in target-oriented synthesis. Their widespread use in organic synthesis is due to the mild conditions associated with the reactions together with their tolerance of a wide range of functional groups. Moreover, these types of reactions allow the rapid construction of complex molecules through multiple bond-forming reactions in a single step, the so-called tandem processes. Pd-catalysed reactions have been applied to the synthesis of a large number of natural products and bioactive compounds, some of them of complex molecular structures. This review article aims to present an overview of the most important Pd-catalysed reactions employed in the synthesis and transformations of quinolin-2(1H)-ones and quinolin-4(1H)-ones. These compounds are widely recognized by their diverse bioactivity, being privileged structures in medicinal chemistry and useful structural moieties for the development of new drug candidates. Furthermore, they hold significant interest due to their host–guest chemistry; applications in chemical, biochemical and environmental analyses and use in the development of new synthetic methods. In some cases, the quinolone formation step cannot be ascribed to a claimed Pd-catalysed reaction but this reaction is crucial to get the appropriate substrate for cyclization into the quinolone. Herein we present and discuss different economical, efficient and selective synthetic strategies to access quinolone-type compounds.