Expanding the Potential of Heteroaryl Vinyl Sulfones

The easily available vinyl sulfone 3 showed great potential for new applications in several fields such as organic synthesis and bioconjugate formation. This was demonstrated by performing a systematic assessment of its reactivity in Michael, radical, and cycloaddition reactions. Heteroaryl vinyl sulfone 3 presented excellent output in terms of reactivity and selectivity, proving superior to phenyl vinyl sulfone 1 and with clear advantages over bis-sulfone 2. This behavior might be due to the conformational and orbital control exerted by the tetrazole unit according to DFT calculations. Moreover, some alternative transformations to the Julia–Kocienski olefination on the obtained products are also described.