A novel palladium-mediated coupling approach to 2,3-disubstituted benzo(b)thiophenes and its application to the synthesis of tubulin binding agents.

[structure: see text]. Flexible, convergent access to 2,3-disubstituted benzo[b]thiophenes has been developed. The most concise approach involves sequential coupling of o-bromoiodobenzenes with benzylmercaptan and zinc acetylides to give benzyl o-ethynylphenyl sulfides which react with iodine to give 3-iodobenzo[b]thiophenes in a 5-endo-dig iodocyclization. These iodides can be further elaborated using palladium-mediated coupling and/or metalation techniques. This method has been applied to the synthesis of some novel tubulin binding agents.