Branching cascades provide access to two amino-oxazoline compound libraries.

An efficient synthetic access to two amino-oxazoline compound libraries was developed employing the branching cascades approach. A common precursor, that is, chromonylidene β-ketoester was transformed into two different ring-systems, that is, the pyridine and the benzopyrane substituted hydroxyphenones. In further two steps, the ketone moiety in two ring-systems was transformed into an amino-oxazoline ring. The functional groups on the two amino-oxazoline scaffolds were exploited further to generate, a compound collection of ca. 600 amino-oxazolines which are being exposed to various biological screenings within the European Lead Factory consortium.