35 years of palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling with Grignard reagents: how far have we come?

This tutorial review is intended to provide the reader with a timely review of major developments and the current state-of-the-art of palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions with Grignard reagents. Organomagnesium reagents, the most reactive and most easily accessible nucleophiles for carbon-carbon bond forming cross-coupling reactions, were the first nucleophiles ever employed in cross-coupling reactions, but have only recently been re-discovered for highly efficient and (stereo)selective coupling reactions. This is mostly a consequence of improved catalyst systems with bulky phosphine, phosphonate or carbene ligands and new metal-halogen exchange procedures for the generation of functionalized Grignard reagents. This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2011