A copper-catalyzed domino route toward purine-fused tricyclic derivatives.

Purine-fused tricyclic derivatives have been synthesized via a copper-catalyzed domino Michael/oxidative cross-coupling reaction between adenines and nitroolefins for the first time. With air as the oxidant, this method has high regioselectivity, which provides a new route for constructing purine-nucleoside-conjugated systems with two newly formed C–N bonds. Meanwhile, purine nucleosides with an exocyclic amino group could be obtained easily by simple reduction, which may lead to potential applications in fluorescence recognition of various bases in vivo.