Skeletal editing of tetrahydrofurans to pyrrolidines through O-to-N single atom swap

Skeletal editing has emerged as a powerful strategy for organic synthesis, addressing a long-standing synthetic challenge between molecular scaffolds. In recent years, skeletal editing (insertion, deletion, and swap) undergoes rapid evolution and realizes many remarkable transformations between basic or complex molecular skeletons. Different from atom insertion and deletion reactions, atom swap reactions enable selective exchange of atoms in a single step. Among existing atom swap strategies, the editing of aromatic scaffolds has been extensively studied, while the editing of aliphatic scaffolds remains limited to only a few reports. Tetrahydrofuran rings, as one of the most common aliphatic scaffolds, are highly attractive targets for conversion into high-value pyrrolidines. Herein, we report a practical and straightforward method to convert tetrahydrofurans to N-acyl pyrrolidines using nitriles as the nitrogen source, achieving oxygen-to-nitrogen (O-to-N) atom swap in one step. Skeletal editing has emerged as a powerful strategy to enable scaffold interconversion in organic synthesis. However, atom swap reactions on aliphatic frameworks remain rare compared with aromatic systems. Here, the authors report an oxygen-to-nitrogen atom swap converting tetrahydrofurans into N-acyl pyrrolidines.