Recent progress in the chemistry of β-aminoketones.

The β-aminoketone moiety has been found to be the basic skeleton of several drugs such as the amine salts "tolperisone (vasodilation)" and "oxyfedrine (therapeutic coronary disease)", and fluoroaryl derivatives such as "sitagliptin (antidiabetic)". The objective of this review is to summarize and highlight the chemistry of compounds reported with a β-aminoketone core in the last five years regarding their synthetic strategies, chemical reactivity, and mechanistic synthetic pathways. In the different sections, we categorize the synthesis of β-aminoketones by Mannich reactions via catalytic, non-catalytic, and one-pot procedures. Also, the synthesis of the investigated compounds is accomplished by condensation reactions, from propargylic alcohols, reductive hydroamination, alkylation, carbonylative coupling, and acid hydrolysis of metal complexes. The aim of this review is to provide details for the synthesis of piperidines, morpholinones, piperazinones, dihydroxy-2-oxopyrroles, spirocyclic systems, imidazolines, indolizines, pyrido-isoindoles, aminoalcohols, metal complexes, fluoxetine, sotolon, (S)-ketamine, indolines, and benzoazepinones.