American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science, 6592(376), p. 527-532, 2022
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Discovery chemists routinely identify purpose-tailored molecules through an iterative structural optimization approach, but the preparation of each successive candidate in a compound series can rarely be conducted in a manner matching their thought process. This is because many of the necessary chemical transformations required to modify compound cores in a straightforward fashion are not applicable in complex contexts. We report a method that addresses one facet of this problem by allowing chemists to hop directly between chemically distinct heteroaromatic scaffolds. Specifically, we show that selective photolysis of quinoline N -oxides with 390-nanometer light followed by acid-promoted rearrangement affords N -acylindoles while showing broad compatibility with medicinally relevant functionality. Applications to late-stage skeletal modification of compounds of pharmaceutical interest and more complex transformations involving serial single-atom changes are demonstrated.