An unprecedented microwave-assisted multicomponent strategy has been elaborated for the fast, efficient, and diastereoselective generation of the dibenzo[c,e]azepinone scaffold. The generated compounds were evaluated for their bioactivity. ' INTRODUCTION The structures of small molecules from Nature have been optimized by evolution, and many of them are tailored to interact with larger biomolecules to induce a physiological response. 1 These small natural products represent an invaluable source for the discovery process of new therapeutic agents. Since the active natural product is usually not equipped with advanced biological properties required for a chemotherapeutic agent (e.g., toxicity issues), usually a series of skeletal and stereochemical analogues have to be generated synthetically. Promising strategies for this purpose are diversity-oriented synthesis 2 (DOS) and diverted total synthesis 3 (DTS). Multicomponent reactions 4 (MCRs) are increasingly recognized as valuable tools in the realization of DOS and DTS. Since the pioneering work of Passerini and Ugi, MCRs have become popular tools for diversity generation during drug development. 4g MCRs are convergent reactions in which three or more starting materials react to form a product, and all or most of the atoms contribute to the newly formed compound. 4 As MCRs have been combined with various cyclization strategies, 5 they often result in the formation of rather complex molecular structures. 6 It has been shown that MCRs can greatly benefit from the use of microwave irradiation in terms of reaction time and yield. 7 We were interested in the development of the dibenzo-[c,e]azepinone scaffold 8 as it shows interesting structural resemblance with the framework of the γ-secretase inhibitor LY411575, which was developed by Eli Lilly 9 (Figure 1, I). The importance of biaryls in biological, synthetic, and materials chemistry has inspired the development of numerous methods for their assembly with control of axial chirality. 10 With this in mind, we were attracted by the retrosynthesis shown in Figure 1, where the key step of our approach consists of a microwave-assisted intramolecular Ugi 4CR of an appropriate biaryl com-pound bearing the required aldehyde and carboxylic acid moiety. This precursor can easily be assembled applying our previously reported microwave-assisted coupling protocol 11 of an o-formyl phenylboronic acid with a suitable methyl o-bromo benzoate.