We report a palladium-catalyzed carbonylative synthesis of alkynone-substituted isoquinolinones utilizing chloroform as a safe CO surrogate. The base-mediated hydrolysis of CHCl3 generates CO in situ, facilitating the efficient coupling of 2-iodobenzamides with alkynes. Furthermore, this external CO-free protocol demonstrates a broad substrate scope, excellent functional group tolerance, and scalability, thereby providing direct access to bioactive isoquinoline scaffolds.
Li et al. (Wed,) studied this question.