Indole Synthesis Using Silver Catalysis

Indoles are amongst the most important classes of heteroaromatics in organic chemistry, commonly found in biologically active natural products and therapeutically useful compounds. The synthesis of indoles is therefore important and several methods for their synthesis that make use of silver(I) catalysts and reagents have been developed in recent years. This Minireview contains, to the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive coverage of silver-mediated indole forming reactions since the first reaction of this type was reported in 2004.