The N-arylsulfonamide group is an important moiety in medicinal chemistry because of its presence in many useful molecules with potential bioactivities. As a result, the development of synthetic routes to N-arylsulfonamides has been actively investigated. In recent years, the transition metal-catalyzed sulfonamidations of aryl halides, arylboronic acids and C_Ar-H bonds have extensively investigated, providing more efficient and environmentally friendly procedures for the synthesis of N-arylsulfonamides. The recent progress in the transition metal-catalyzed sulfonamidation reactions is reviewed. The aromatic substrates, transition metal-catalysts, ligands, sulfonamidating reagents, mechanisms of the sulfonamidation reactions are mainly discussed. Finally, the future development of them is also prospected.

The C=C double bond cleavage of NH₂-functionalized enaminones has been realized at room temperature to provide various N-sulfonyl amidines by reacting with sulfonyl azides. The reactions take place with good substrate tolerance in the presence of 1,8-Diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene (DBU) without any metal or oxidant reagent. The ¹⁵N-labelling experiment on enaminone indicates that the sulfonyl azide component donates solely the sulfonamide fragment, and the reaction mechanism involving a key decomposition of the in situ generated 1,2,3-triazoline intermediate is convictively supported.

A nickel-catalyzed Negishi coupling of cyclobutanone oxime esters with aryl zinc reagents has been developed, in which nickel serves both as an initiator for imine radicals and a catalyst for the coupling of aryl zinc reagents with oxime esters. The protocol can avoid the use of poisonous cyanide and has broad substrate scope as well as good functional group compatibility. Therefore, this method provides an attractive strategy for the synthesis of valuable nitriles. Preliminary mechanistic studies indicate that a radical pathway is involved in the product formation.

Transition metal complexes-catalyzed homogeneous asymmetric hydrogenation is an important method for the synthesis of chiral compounds. At present, it is mainly focused on precious transition metal catalytic systems, such as ruthenium, rhodium, iridium and palladium. However, they are suffered from the difficulties of limited resource, high cost and environmental contamination. Therefore, it is important and necessary to develop catalytic systems based on cheap, non-toxic or low toxic, environmentally friendly and earth-abundant iron, cobalt, nickel, copper transition metal, which are in accordance with the requirements and research trend of the sustainable development of modern chemistry. The recent progress of nickel-catalyzed homogeneous asymmetric hydrogenation of prochiral unsaturated compounds containing carbon oxygen double bond (C=O), carbon carbon double bond (C=C) and carbon nitrogen double bond (C=N) is reviewed, and some breakthroughs and considerable research results achieved are introduced. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of different types of substrates in nickel catalyst system are analyzed, and the future research direction is prospected.

Pure organic luminescent supramolecular materials with either phosphorescence or fluorescence emission have become a hot research topic due to their low toxity, facile preparation and wide applications. In recent years, our group has designed several novel luminescent macromolecules, achieving tunable multi-color emission. For the construction of phosphorescent materials, heavy atoms such as bromine and iodine as well as other hetroatoms with lone pair electrons like oxygen were employed to facilitate the intersystem crossing (ISC) process of the luminophores while rigid environments were provided via host-guest interactions and polymerization to restrict molecular motions, which results in reduced nonradiative decay. Moreover, noncovalent interactions are stimuli responsive because of their dynamic nature. Therefore, host-guest interactions, along with other noncovalent interactions including hydrophobic effects, π-π stacking and multiple hydrogen bonding, were also used for adjusting the intensities and wavelengths of phosphorescence or fluorescence, achieving diverse luminescence properties that the luminophore itself does not possess. This account summarizes the above advances and proposes possible directions for further research, like not only improving quantum yields but also expanding the range of emission wavelength of organic phosphorescent materials and developing luminescent materials that can intelligently respond to external stimuli.

The advent of visible light photoredox catalysis has transformed the way of single-electron transfer (SET) processes and accessing radical species. As a result, the chemistry of nitrogen-centered radicals has witnessed a remarkable gain in interest. Specifically, under visible light photoredox catalysis, iminyl radicals can be generated from oxime derivatives, such as O-acyl oximes, O-aryl oximes and α-imino-oxy acids. Meanwhile, the reactivity of iminyl radcials is investigated systematically. Iminyl radicals can undergo four major classes of reactions, namely addition to arenes, intramolecular hydrogen atom transfer and subsequent reactions, addition to alkenes, Norrish type-I fragmentation (cleavage of α-carbon-carbon bonds) and subsequent reactions. In this review, the most significant progresses in the use of oximes and their derivatives as iminyl precursors are discussed and their engagement in photoredox-mediated transformations is outlined.

In the past decades, transition metal-catalyzed C—H activation has experienced tremendous growth and revolutionized the field of organic synthesis. Several elegant strategies have been developed to promote reactivity and control precise site-selectivity. Among which, transient directing group strategy has been recognized to be an efficient and powerful approach for selective C—H functionalization. In contrast to traditional directing groups with covalent linkage, transient directing group strategy circumvents the covalent installation and removal of directing groups, which significantly improve the synthetic efficiency and broaden the range of synthetic applications. The recent advances in imine-based transition directing groups are summarized, providing an overview of recent achievements in this cutting-edge research field over the past few years. For clarity, it is classified into two sections according to the type of substrate and the type of activated hydrocarbon bond. Emphasis is placed on the fully discussion of various transient directing groups and their applications. Finally, the limitations of previous works and perspectives on this cutting-edge area are also described.

3-(5-Oxazolyl)indole-type natural products such as pimprinine and streptochlorin, widely exist in marine microorganism, because of their diverse biological activity, 3-(5-oxazolyl)indoles show good research and development potential in the field of medicine and pesticide. Numerous studies have been performed to synthesize 3-(5-oxazolyl)indole-type natural products, in which the construction of indole ring and oxazole ring is the most important part. In this paper, the reported natural products with 3-(5-oxazolyl)indole skeleton structure and their biological activities are summarized, and the synthetic methods for 3-(5-oxazolyl)indole skeleton and some of their mechanism are also reviewed. The application prospect of 3-(5-oxazol-yl)indole as a dominant active structure in the future was discussed.

Catalytic asymmetric hydrofunctionalization of alkene is an important research field, which enables efficient construction of chiral molecules from readily available starting materials. Asymmetric hydrofunctionalization of multiple substituted alkenes represents a significant challenge to organic chemists because this process involves the simutaneous control of regio-, diastereo-, and enantio-selectivities. The key to solve this challenge is to identify novel catalyst systems to exert powerful regio- and stereo-control. Recently, by taking advantage of substrate-directed strategy, we have developed a number of alkene functionalization methods with excellent regio-, diastereo-, and enantio-selectivities. In particular, we focus on catalytic asymmetric hydroalkynylation of alkenes as a model transformation to analyze the factors that control the selectivity.

Development of efficient and practical asymmetric catalytic reactions plays a pivotal role for the concise syntheses of chiral drugs. Chiral ligands and catalysts are crucial for the selectivity and reactivity of the catalytic reactions. In this account, the design and development of a series of P-chiral mono- and bis-phosphorus ligands were summarized based on a benzooxaphosphane backbone and their applications in the synthesis of chiral drugs. Beside their P-chirality, these ligands are structurally rigid, sterically bulky, and electron-rich, providing good physical properties and tunabilities. Facilitated by these chiral ligands, a series of efficient and practical reactions including asymmetric hydrogenation, asymmetric cross-coupling, asymmetric cyclization, and asymmetric nucleophilic additions have been developed. The excellent conversions, yields, regioselectivities, enantioselectivities, and broad substrate scope have enabled concise and efficient syntheses of a series of chiral drugs.

By silica gel, Sephadex LH-20 column chromatography as well as preparative high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), four previously undescribed α-pyrones sharing same primary structure were isolated from the brown rice solid medium of Fusarium tricinctum. Their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic analyses and their absolute configurations were finally confirmed by a modified Snatzke's method.

Thiocyanate, as a versatile synthon, which has important application value in many fields such as pharmaceutical, pesticide and materials. The photocatalytic and electrocatalytic thiocyanation reactions have been widely concerned in organic chemistry due to the advantages of green, efficiency and safety. In this review, the cross-coupling/thiocyanation reactions based on the photocatalytic and electrocatalytic are described, which is expected to be helpful in exploring the green synthesis of thiocyanates compounds.

Fingerprint can directly identify the person, and it is one of the most important physical evidence in the criminal scene. Fingerprint has always been considered as the "head of physical evidence" and plays an important role in the investigation and court proceedings. However, the fingerprint on the relevant object can not be directly observed by human eyes in actual cases, so it is also called "latent fingerprint". Although the latent fingerprint development technology has made great progress, it still faces many difficulties in the aspects of nondestructive, sensitive and efficient. And, it will bring serious difficulties to the subsequent fingerprint identification work for the criminal technicians. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop highly selective, sensitive and convenient latent fingerprint developing materials or techniques. In view of this, on the basis of the research achievements at home and abroad, the application of traditional organic materials widely used in latent fingerprint development and the new fluorescent organic materials is briefly reviewed, such as aggregation induced emission materials, conjugated polymer materials and other organic fluorescent materials, in latent fingerprint development in recent ten years. The design concept of related organic materials and the mechanism of developing latent fingerprints are summarized. Finally, the existing problems are discussed, and the future development trend of organic materials in developing latent fingerprints is prospected.

Sulfur-containing heterocyclic compounds such as thiazole, thiophene, thiopyrone, widely exist in numerous natural products and biologically active molecules. Developing of effective strategies for the formation of sulfur-containing heterocycles has become a popular research hotspot. Meanwhile, the free-radical cascade reaction of unsaturated bonds in the synthesis of heterocycle has always been an important branch of synthetic chemistry, and the achieved progresses in recent years have also demonstrated its huge potential. Researchers found that sulfur atom could act as radical acceptors to build a C-S bond, and established a series of free radical reactions through this strategy. Among them, the radical cascade reactions of anisole derivatives have been gradually developed into an important synthetic tool toward sulfur-containing heterocycles. The recent advances in the field of radical-initiated reactions of anisoles for the construction of sulfur-containing heterocycles, in which sulfur atoms play as radical acceptors, are summarized. In addition, the reaction design, mechanism and applicability of sulfur-containing heterocyclic compounds via radical cyclization towards the synthesis of complex molecules are also covered.

Driven by nowadays’ computing power, big data technology as well as learning algorithm, artificial intelligence (AI) has gained trenmendous attentions and become a transformative approach in many research areas. One of the most extensively explored AI approaches in chemistry is (deep) machine learning, which provides new twists in the fields of organic chemistry. The workflow of machine learning (ML) study in organic chemistry is briefly introduced. Meanwhile, the application of ML in the accurate prediction of chemical properties, molecular de novo design, chemical reaction prediction, retrosynthetic analysis and artificial intelligence synthetic machine are also summarized. In the end, the current challenges in this field are analyzed and discussed.

Climate change and depletion of fossil fuels have drawn considerable attention. Considering carbon dioxide is both the dominant greenhouse gas and renewable C₁ source, CO₂ valorization into valuable chemicals is considered to reconcile the environment benefit and sustainable chemistry development. Unfortunately, the thermodynamic stability and kinetic inertness of CO₂ make its chemical transformation challenging. As a consequence, developing highly efficient catalytic systems and synthetic protocols is crucial for CO₂ conversion. In recent years, He's group made great progress on strategy design and catalyst development for CO₂ conversion. A series novel CO₂ conversion strategies are proposed, including CO₂ capture and in-situ transformation, hierarchical reductive functionalization of CO₂, designing thermodynamically favorable reactions by multi-component cascade reaction and photo-promoted CO₂ transformation. Concurrently, the corresponding highly efficient catalytic systems were also developed based on the reaction mechanism and thus CO₂ transformation was successfully performed under mild conditions. It is hoped that this review can arouse broad concern on CO₂ transformation and spur its further development.

Chiral aryl alcohols are prevalent in a broad range of biologically active compounds, pharmaceutical agents and natural products. They also constitute a broad class of optically active building blocks for the synthesis of important chiral compounds. In recent years, organoboron reagents are widely used in organic synthesis as they possess advantages of ready availability, low toxicity, good air and moisture stability as well as high functional group compatibility. Since the first report of rhodium-catalyzed asymmetric addition of aryl boronic acids to aryl aldehydes in 1998 by Miyaura, the use of organoboron reagents in asymmetric addition to various carbonyl compounds under various transition-metal catalyses has been intensively investigated. Over the past two decades, transition metal-catalyzed asymmetric addition of organoboron reagents to aldehydes and ketones has proved as one of the most direct and powerful methods for accessing versatile optically active alcohols. The development and progress of a wide range of chiral ligands for Rh, Ru, Pd, Ir, Cu, Ni and Co catalysis for asymmetric addition of organoboron reagents to aldehydes and ketones are summarized, and the achievements in enantioselective synthesis of chiral aryl alcohols and their applications in the synthesis of related biocative products are described. Among them, rhodium and ruthenium-catalyzed enantioselective additions have received considerable attention. In the cases of activated carbonyl compounds such as α-aryl ketoesters and α-diaryl diketones, excellent results can be attained in terms of both yield and enantioselectivity. However, it remains a daunting challenge for highly enantioselective addition to simple unactivated aldehydes and ketones owing to the difficulty in overcoming stereo differentiation. Future efforts in the community would focus on developing new effective transition-metal catalysts in addressing these issues by promoting efficient transformation and controlling excellent enantioselectivity.

Cinchona alkaloids widely exist in nature, which have attracted extensive interest of researchers because of their readily availability, biological activity, unique structural properties, and easy modification. With the development of asymmetric synthetic chemistry, cinchona alkaloids and their derivatives have been used as a privileged class of chiral catalysts or ligands in many catalytic asymmetric reactions. In particular, a variety of cinchona alkaloid-derived chiral catalysts and ligands have been developed and applied by organic chemists in catalytic asymmetric synthesis in rencent years. The recent progress made in this field over the past few years is summarized. Moreover, the related reaction mechanisms and future development prospects are also discussed.

A series of thiazolo[3,2-a]pyrimidine derivatives were synthesized from the reaction of α-bromoacetophenone, aromatic aldehyde, malononitrile and thiourea which was catalyzed by Tröger's base derivative 5,12-dimethyl-3,10-diphenyl- bis-1H-pyrazol[b,f] [4,5]-1,5- diazadicyclo[3.3.1]-2,6-octadiene (1). The reaction mechanism was discussed by the ¹H NMR analysis and chemical experiments. The pharmacological activity results of the products indicated that most of products showed high inhibitory on one or more cancer cells in human hepatocarcinoma cell (HepG2), human non-small cell lung cancer cell (247) and human non-small cell lung cancer cell (A549) in vitro. And seven products have antibacterial activity against the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. These results showed the great potential of these compounds in drug development.

Organosilicon compounds have been widely used in organic synthesis, biomedicine, material science and other fields. The development of simple and efficient C——Si bond construction methodology has attracted extensive attention from scientists. Transition-metal-catalyzed carbene insertion reaction of Si——H bond is one of the important methods to form C——Si bond. It not only has the advantages of simple operation, mild reaction conditions and high atom economy, but also can be used to synthesize various chiral organosilanes with high enantioselectivity through the regulation of chiral ligands. In recent years, achieved rapid development has been in this field, and various new carbene precursors and metal catalytic systems have been emerged. According to the group of transition metal elements, recent advance in the iron, copper, zinc, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, silver, iridium and gold catalyzed carbene insertion reactions of Si——H bond since 2012 is reviewed in five parts.

Industrial processes of fixing carbon dioxide (CO₂) lag far behind the carbon emission generated by human activity. Since CO₂ is an abundant, non-toxic, and cost-effective one carbon source, it is highly desirable to develop methodologies on converting CO₂ into valuable products for sustainable purpose. Based on the mechanistic insight of CO₂ activation by transition-metal catalyst and organocatalyst, a variety of efficient asymmetric CO₂ chemical fixation processes have been developed in recent years. This review discusses the advances of enantioselective synthesis of small molecules by asymmetric catalytic reactions with CO₂. The interaction between catalyst, CO₂ and substrate has been elaborated aiming to inspire the design of new catalytic systems for asymmetric CO₂ transformation.

The photocatalytic redox reactions have been widely concerned in organic chemistry due to their green, efficiency and safety. In this review, the cross-coupling/aromatization reactions are described based on photocatalytic organic hydrogen-evolution, which can be used to build organic carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bonds by using a photocatalyst/catalyst dual catalytic system. Hydrogen is the only by-product in these reactions. The system and catalytic mechanisms of organic photocatalytic redox reaction are highlighted.

Recently, the direct sulfenylation of C——H bond for C——S formation under transition metal-free conditions has rapidly advanced and is employed for eco-friendly synthesis of sulfenylated natural or bioactive compounds with various sulfenylating reagents. In particular, the sulfenylation of indoles is considered to be the most important because it can lead to a new class of molecules displaying a broad spectrum of biological and pharmaceutical activities. The recent five-year progress in direct C——H bond sulfenylation of indoles under transition metal-free conditions is discussed and their mechanisms in detail are described.

Free radical reactions represent an efficient and significant tool to construct organic molecules by taking advantages of the high-efficiency, remarkable selectivity and good functional groups tolerance. Lewis-base boryl radicals are a class of species that possess unique structures and chemical reactivity, and a variety of synthetic applications have been developed. This account summarizes the research advances in this research field mainly contributed by our group. The results include Lewis-based boryl radicals enabled borylation reactions, Lewis-based boryl radicals-catalyzed new reactions, and Lewis-based boryl radicals promoted reduction reactions. These reactions feature mild reaction conditions, good functional groups compatibility, high yields, and excellent chemo-, regio-, and stereo-selectivities.

N³-Purine nucleoside can be employed as a potent dual inhibitor to inhibit viruses more effectively because it could be possibly recognized by both purine-and pyrimidine-metabolizing enzymes. Herein, an asymmetric transfer hydrogenation via dynamic kinetic resolution of rac-α-(purin-3-yl)cyclopentones has been developed to produce a wide range of carbocyclic N³-purine nucleosides in high yields and excellent stereoselectivities. Moreover, the catalytic system was suitable for rac-α-pyrimidinyl cyclopentones. With additional transformations, several 2'-F-, AcS-, N₃-modified carbocyclic nucleosides could be obtained with good to excellent yields and excellent enantioselectivities.

Aspirin (ASP), the first synthetic drug, is widely used as a non steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. It displays a variety of biological activities, such as anti-thrombosis, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, etc. A lot of works about the synthesis and related activity evaluation of its derivatives were reported. There are four kinds of derivatization methods:skeleton derivatization, prodrug derivatization, twin derivatization and metal coordination derivatization. According to the different modification sites, skeleton derivatization could be further divided into C(1)-COOH site modification, C(1)-COOH site and C(2)-OAc site simultaneous modification, C(2)-OAc site modification and benzene ring modification. NO-ASP is the main method to prepare antithrombotic derivatives, and metal coordination modification is the main synthesis scheme of anticancer derivatives. The structure modification and bioactivity research of aspirin in recent twenty years and the synthetic routes of 353 aspirin derivatives and the pharmacological activities of some derivatives are described, which provides a reference for the further development of aspirin derivatives.

Benzofulvenes were widely found in natural products and bioactive molecules, and also served as important building blocks in material science and transition-metal chemistry. Great efforts have been devoted to the efficient synthesis of these interesting molecules, and rapid advancement has been made in the past two decades. According to the types of the initiation of the reaction, these methods can roughly be classified into five categories:thermal or photochemical cyclization of enyne-al-lenes or enediynes, transition metal-catalyzed sequential cyclization reaction, electrophilic or nucleophilic attack initiated cyclization, radical initiated cyclization and acid promoted cyclization. This review describes the important synthetic methods of benzofulvenes according to their reaction types.

Optically pure 1,3-amino alcohol is not only the important synthon in organic synthesis, but also the core structure of numerous bioactive molecule. As a result, the formation of 1,3-amino alcohols occupies a hot resarch topic in asymmetric synthesis. This review symmarizes several types of frequently-used methods and progress on synthesizing 1,3-amino alcohols:aldol or azo-aldol condensation synthesis, transition metal catalyzed C-H activation and amination synthesis, ring-opening and addition of azocyclic compounds, and[3+2] dipolar-cycloaddition reaction etc.

Transition-metal catalyzed C-C bond cleavage reaction is one of the most challenge topics, and has drawn considerable attention in recent years. This process has not only emerged as a useful strategy for syntheses of complex molecular skeletons, but also satisfied atom economy. Compared to the noble transition metals catalysis such as Rh, Pd and Ir, the nickel catalysis offered a more cost effective option and exhibited unique activity or selectivity. This recent advances on the Ni-catalyzed C-C bond activations are summarized.

Over the last decades, the transition metal-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions have become powerful organic synthetic methods for forming carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bonds. Very recently, the introduction of visible light into transition metal catalysis opened a new avenue for achieving novel, highly enabling cross-coupling reactions that otherwise were elusive. This type of reaction has received extensive attention due to its simple, mild conditions and no need of photocatalyst. Based on the classification of transition metals, the research progress of transition metal-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions directly promoted by visible light is reviewed.

In recent years, the field of organic fluorine chemistry has developed rapidly. Fluorination and fluorine-containing functionalization reactions have attracted extensive attention of organic chemists due to their special physical and chemical properties. The introduction of fluorine-containing group into drug molecules can improve the biological activity of drug molecules. Trifluoromethoxy group has strong electron absorption and high lipophilicity, compounds containing trifluoromethoxy play an important role in the fields of medicine, pesticides and materials. In recent years, some innovative strategies have been used to synthesize compounds containing trifluoromethoxy group. This account mainly focuses on the research of trifluoromethoxy reaction in our group, and some challenges faced by trifluoromethoxy reaction.

Due to its alkene moiety and highly strained aziridine scaffold, vinylaziridines represent a versatile type of synthetic building blocks and can undergo various chemcial transformations. These transformations enabled facile synthesis of a wide range of nitrogen-containing compounds, especially diverse nitrogen heterocycles, inculding azetidines, pyrrolidines, piperidines, azacycloheptanes and so on. Moreover, development of simple and efficient synthetic methods for various substituted vinylaziridines, stimulating their applications in the fields of organic synthesis, medicinal and agrochemistry, as well as fine chemistry. In recent years, such type of reagents continue to attract considerable research efforts from chemists and enjoyed rapid development. The representative examples of nucleophilic ring-opening and cyclization reactions of vinyl-aziridines over the past five years are summarized. Moreover, the prospects of further development are also disscussed.

Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) compounds have attracted much attention due to their important potential applications in biological and chemical sensing, luminescent materials, display and other areas. As an important class of functional molecules, organofluorine compounds have been widely studied in areas such as organic chemitry and materials chemistry. The organofluorine compounds with AIE properties are summarized and classified. The currently reported AIE organofluorine compounds include the fluorinated tetraphenylethene (TPE) derivatives, 9,10-distyrylanthracene (DSA) derivatives, cyanostilbene derivatives, distyrylbenzene derivatives, fluorinated polymers, carborane clusters, room temperature phosphorescent molecules, and some other fluorinated structures. With fluorine atoms in the structures, the stability of the resulting AIE compounds is generally improved, and fluorine atoms often participate in the intermolecular interactions leading to significant changes in the structure of the aggregation state, and hence changes in luminescence properties, for example, emission enhancement, bathochromism or hypsochromism of the emissions, improvement of the emission quantum yield and lifetime. The prospects of the future study are also discussed.

Alkyl carboxylic acids are among the most ubiquitous organic molecules found in nature. The reactions using abundant carboxylic acid and its derivatives as starting materials deserve widespread attention over the world. They are often easy to generate alkyl radical by photoredox catalysis under mild conditions for building various chemical bonds in organic chemistry. Based on the reaction modes, decarboxylation of alkylcarboxylic acids and their derivatives, the recent progress in decarboxylation of alkylcarboxylic acids and their derivatives under visible light is reviewed.

Carbon dioxide is a readily available, low-cost, abundant, non-toxic C1 source, which can potentially serve as an ideal building block in synthetic chemistry. Recently, much progress, expecially multi-component reactions (MCRs) has been achieved in construction of carbonyl-containing heterocycles through annulation by using carbon dioxide as carbonyl/carboxyl source. Herein, the advances on the annulation reaction of atmospheric CO₂ with N-, and O-nucleophiles for the constructioin of various carbonyl-containing heterocycles, including benzoxazin, cyclic carbamates, lactams, oxazolidine-2,4-diones are reviewed. In addition, the carboxylation of C-nucleophiles with CO₂ toward carboxylic acids is also summarized.

In order to find efficient and low toxicity anti-tumor drugs, a series of novel 4-aminoquinazoline derivatives containing benzothiazole were designed and synthesized. And their antiproliferative activities against four human cancer cell lines[human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7), human gastric carcinoma cell line (MGC-803), human prostate cancer cell line (PC-3), human gastric carcinoma cell line (HGC-27)] were evaluated by using methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) assay. The results showed that most compounds exhibited good antiproliferative activities against the four human tumor cell lines. Among them, 2-((benzo[d]thiazol-2-ylmethyl)thio)-N-(3-chloro-4-fluorophenyl)-quinazolin-4-amine (13n) showed the best antiproliferative activity against MCF-7, MGC 803, PC-3 and HGC-27 cancer cell lines, with IC₅₀ values of (6.01±0.54), (7.63±0.48), (6.16±0.34), (7.59±0.62) μmol·L^-1, respectively. Its activity was better than the positive control gefitinib. Molecular docking showed that compound 13n could bind well with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). In a nutshell, this work provides clues to discover antitumor agent based on the quinazoline scaffold.

Peroxynitrite (ONOO^-) is an important reactive oxygen species in living organisms, and is associated with various biological process in human body. Using dicyanomethylene-4H-pyran coumarin system, a near-infrared ratiometric fluorescent probe (E)-7-(diethylamino)-3-(2-(dicyanomethylene-4H-pyran)vinyl)-coumarin (DCCM) was developed for ONOO^- detec-tion. This probe exhibited a strong response in the presence of ONOO^-, with a significant color change from purple to light pink, along with 217 nm fluorescence blue shift. The emission color changed from heliotrope to blue, which enables the monitoring of ONOO^- by naked eyes. DCCM was used to sensitively measure ONOO^- with low detection limit of 6.0×10^-7 mol·L^-1. The use of DCCM for imaging ONOO^- in HeLa cells was also demonstrated.

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are an emerging class of porous crystalline organic materials connected by covalent bonds. Owing to their high crystallinity, low density, large surface area and designable structures, COFs have potential applications in molecular adsorption and separation, catalysis, optoelectronic devices, and energy storage. Recently, due to their inherent characteristics, COFs have attracted a lot of interests in sensing. The research progress of COFs in sensing, including explosive sensing, humidity sensing, metal ions sensing, pH sensing, biosensing and gas sensing is summarized. Finally, a perspective of the application of COFs in sensing is given.

The synthesis of alkyl boronic esters has attracted much attention because of their wide applications in organic synthesis, materials and medicines. Transition-metal catalyzed hydroboration of alkenes was one of the most effective methods to construct alkyl boronic esters. Compared with rhodium, ruthenium, palladium, iridium and other precious metal catalysts, iron, cobalt and nickel catalysts were not only low cost, but also they displayed unique reactivity and selectivity. In this paper, the important advances in hydroboration of alkenes catalyzed by iron, cobalt and nickel have been summarized since 1994, including catalytic activity, selectivity and substrate scope of different catalytic systems.