Mild and efficient copper-catalyzed oxidative cyclization of oximes with 2-aminobenzyl alcohols at room temperature: synthesis of polysubstituted quinolines.

A simple and efficient ligand-free Cu-catalyzed protocol for the synthesis of polysubstituted quinolines via oxidative cyclization of oxime acetates with 2-aminobenzyl alcohols at room temperature has been developed. The presented approach provides a new synthetic pathway leading to polysubstituted quinolines with good functional group tolerance under mild conditions. Moreover, this transformation can be applied for the preparation of quinolines on a gram scale. Oxime acetates serve as the internal oxidants in the reactions, thus making this method very attractive.