Cycloaddition reactions of porphyrins

Abstract

Adequately substituted porphyrins can participate in pericyclic reactions as dienes, dienophiles, dipolarophiles and as 1,3-dipoles. They also show interesting dipolar 1,5-electrocyclizations and cheletropic reactions with carbenes. All these different types of reactivity have been exploited in order to synthesize new potential biologically active porphyrin derivatives, mainly chlorins and bacteriochlorins. This paper reviews the most recent works where porphyrins have participated in pericyclic reactions.