Review A Review of the Synthetic Strategies toward Dihydropyrrolo[1,2-a]Pyrazinones Pieterjan Winant 1,† , Tomas Horsten 1,† , Shaiani Maria Gil de Melo 2, Flavio Emery 2,* and Wim Dehaen 1,* 1 Molecular Design and Synthesis, Department of Chemistry, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200F, 3001 Leuven, Belgium;
[email protected] (P.W.);
[email protected] (T.H.) 2 Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Ribeirao Preto of the University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto 14040903, SP, Brazil;
[email protected] * Correspondence: fl
[email protected] (F.E.);
[email protected] (W.D.) † Both authors contributed equally to this work. Abstract: Dihydropyrrolo[1,2-a]pyrazinone rings are a class of heterocycles present in a wide range of bioactive natural products and analogues thereof. As a direct result of their bioactivity, the synthesis of this privileged class of compounds has been extensively studied. This review provides an overview of these synthetic pathways. The literature is covered up until 2020 and is organized according to the specific strategies used to construct the scaffold: fusing a pyrazinone to an existing pyrrole, employing a pyrazinone-first strategy, an array of multicomponent reactions and some miscellaneous reactions. Keywords: pyrrole; pyrazinone; heterocycle; natural product; cycloaddition; multicomponent reaction 1. Introduction Citation: Winant, P.; Horsten, T.; Gil de Melo, S.M.; Emery,F.; Dehaen, W.A Nitrogen-containing heteroaromatic rings are valuable motifs in bioactive molecules Review of the Synthetic Strategies toward and recurrent scaffolds present in drugs [1,2]. The application of nitrogen ring systems Dihydropyrrolo[1,2-a]Pyrazinones. in drug development is related to their diverse properties, including relatively small con- Organics 2021, 2, 118–141.