A class of confined chiral hypervalent iodines have been designed and developed by incorporating two sterically demanding BINOL-derived units, which form the second-layer chiral environment, into the iodine-containing molecules to lock down the conformation of the catalyst and indirectly create a compact chiral environment around the active site. Good-to-excellent enantioselectivities have been achieved
medicinal agents and bioactive alkaloids. Herein we report a broadly applicable synthesis of enantioenriched NH lactams through a one-pot asymmetric reductive amination/cyclization sequence of easily available keto acids/esters. Such cascade processes alleviate the demand for protecting group manipulations as well as intermediate purification. This strategy is capable of constructing enantioenriched lactams