Donor-acceptor cyclopropanes as efficient three-carbon synthetic building blocks were widely employed in the synthesis of many natural products and complex drug molecules. However, the ring-opening of aliphatic substituted cyclopropanes, owing to their poor reactivity, usually suffers from the harsh reaction conditions such as strong Lewis acid, large amount of catalyst, high reaction temperature and so on. In this paper, In(NTf₂)₃ was found as a powerful Lewis acid to catalyze the intramolecular nucleophilic ring-opening reaction of donor-acceptor cyclopropane with indole. This reaction could be used to construct the pyrrolo[1,2-a]-indole framework structure in a facile way. This method could be conducted in mild reaction conditions with a broad substrate scope (15 examples), leading to the target products in up to 96% yield. The general procedure is as following: To a dry Schlenk tube in a glove box, was placed In(NTf₂)₃ (0.1 equiv.), 4 Å molecular sieve (50 mg) and a stir bar. The tube was capped and brought out of the glovebox. After connected to argon via a typical Schlenk line system, a solution of 1 (1.0 equiv.) in PhCl (1 mL) was added dropwise until the reaction was completed (monitored by thin-layer chromatography). Et₃N was added to quench the reaction and the reaction mixture was filtered through a thin layer of silica gel and eluted with EtOAc (100 mL). After removal of the volatiles under reduced pressure, the residue was purified by flash chromatography over silica gel to afford the product. When indole substrate contains electron-withdrawing substituents, the reaction temperature needs to be increased to 100 ℃ to obtain the target product.

Key words: In(NTf₂)₃, cyclopropane, nucleophilic ring-opening, intramolecular reaction, pyrrolo[1, pyrrolo[1,2-a]-indole