Organocatalytic asymmetric multicomponent reactions

Organocatalysis has appeared as a powerful tool to mediate highly complex transformations. It is a very recent field of research and in the last years has experimented a constant growth, where many scientists investigate the utilization of organocatalysts in order to pave the way to very impressive and outstanding combination of reactions in a one-pot process. Consequently, thoroughly the high flexibility of activation modes of organocatalysts, and their combination therefore, the construction of highly functionalized chiral complex molecules was made possible. In this book chapter, rather than an exhaustive detailed approach on organocatalyzed asymmetric MCRs, we gave an overall overview on selected remarkable examples. To date, an impressive number of organocatalyzed asymmetric MCRs have appeared, and due to the suitable combination of transformations, very challenging scaffolds were isolated in a single operation by combining very simple, almost always, commercially available, starting materials. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.