Without the separation of intermediates, tandem reactions could afford products with higher yield than traditional reactions. Recently, more and more novel types of tandem reactions, including tandem addition (especially Michael addition), substitution, cyclization and rearrangement reaction, were extensively applied to organic synthesis, especially the synthesis of natural optically active products and compounds with heterocyclic system. The progress is reviewed in detail in this paper.

Key words: organic synthesis, asymmetric synthesis, heterocyclic system, tandem reaction