Recent advances in the Overman rearrangement: synthesis of natural products and valuable compounds.

In the past decade, the Overman rearrangement, an important C-N bond forming reaction, has been intensely used in the synthesis of natural products, synthetic intermediates, building blocks and valuable compounds. This review documents the reports on this rearrangement reaction since 2005. The reaction has been tactfully used to introduce amine functionality in the synthesis of natural products. It is a one-pot process using the intermediate imidate which upon rearrangement generates the amide that can be hydrolysed to the amine. The method has tremendous potential for rapid modification of various amino compounds and can be combined with other Claisen-rearrangements or other reactions for one-pot processes for further exploration.