Recent Advances in the Synthesis of Heterocyclics via Cascade Cyclization of Propargylic Alcohols

Abstract Heterocyclic compounds are important organic compounds and have emerged as key scaffolds in numerous drugs, natural products, vitamins, biologically and pharmaceutically active compounds. Over the past few decades, the development of versatile methodologies employing propargylic alcohols as synthons for the construction of heterocyclic skeletons has attracted great attention from synthetic chemists. In this review, recent developments in the cascade cyclization of propargylic alcohols with diverse nucleophiles to construct heterocyclic compounds are summarized. According to the types of nucleophiles, these reactions can be divided into four categories: 1) Reactions involving C‐nucleophiles to capture allenyl carbocation; 2) Reactions involving O, S‐nucleophiles to capture allenyl carbocation; 3) Reactions involving N, P‐nucleophiles to capture allenyl carbocation; 4) Reactions involving halo‐nucleophiles to capture allenyl carbocation. magnified image