John P. Wolfe has developed many palladium-catalyzed alkene carboamination reactions.
These reactions contribute greatly to the synthesis of nitrogen heterocycles, which are commonly found in both pharmaceuticals and natural products.
 Common applications include the synthesis of pyrrolidines, and three-, five-, six- and seven-membered heterocycles such as pyrazolidines, aziridines, morpholines.
His scope extends further to polycyclic heterocycles and the total synthesis of (+)-aphanorphine.
These alkene aminoarylations take place via the cross-coupling of aryl or alkenyl halides with simple aminoalkene substrates to generate the heterocyclic ring with formation of a C-N bond and a C-C bond.

One area of his works focuses on the Pd(0)-catalyzed alkene aminoarylation:
Pyrrolidines can be efficiently generated via Pd(0)-catalyzed alkene aminoarylation reactions (Scheme 1).
The advantages of this method are the wide substrate scope (substrates bearing N-aryl, N-acetyl, N-Boc, and N-Cbz groups) and good stereoselectivity.

The reaction is initiated by oxidative addition of the aryl bromide to Pd(0) (1), proceeded by the formation of the key intermediate palladium(aryl)amido complex 2, which then undergoes intramolecular syn-migratory insertion of the alkene into the Pd-N bond to yield 3 to generate the product via reductive elimination (Scheme 2).
John P. Wolfe has developed many palladium-catalyzed alkene carboamination reactions. These reactions contribute greatly to the synthesis of nitrogen heterocycles, which are commonly found in both pharmaceuticals and natural products.  Common applications include the synthesis of pyrrolidines, and three-, five-, six- and seven-membered heterocycles such as pyrazolidines, aziridines, morpholines. His scope extends further to polycyclic heterocycles and the total synthesis of (+)-aphanorphine. These alkene aminoarylations take place via the cross-coupling of aryl or alkenyl halides with simple aminoalkene substrates to generate the heterocyclic ring with formation of a C-N bond and a C-C bond.
One area of his works focuses on the Pd(0)-catalyzed alkene aminoarylation:
Pyrrolidines can be efficiently generated via Pd(0)-catalyzed alkene aminoarylation reactions (Scheme 1). The advantages of this method are the wide substrate scope (substrates bearing N-aryl, N-acetyl, N-Boc, and N-Cbz groups) and good stereoselectivity.
The reaction is initiated by oxidative addition of the aryl bromide to Pd(0) (1), proceeded by the formation of the key intermediate palladium(aryl)amido complex 2, which then undergoes intramolecular syn-migratory insertion of the alkene into the Pd-N bond to yield 3 to generate the product via reductive elimination (Scheme 2).
John P. Wolfe