Saturated N-heterocycles are ubiquitous structures among natural products and biologically active compounds, but methods to edit the ring size of these substructures are scarce. Now the ring expansion of unactivated cyclic amines has been achieved via sequential Ru-catalysed C‒C bond formation, retro-aza-Michael addition and a lactamization process to construct synthetically challenging medium-sized azacycles.
- Licheng Wu
- Hanyu Xia
- Yifeng Chen
