Palladium-catalyzed direct arylation of maleimides: A simple route to bisaryl-substituted maleimides

Palladium-catalyzed direct arylation of maleimides via Heck as well as organoboron-mediated Heck-type reactions are developed. These methods offer an approach to a wide variety of biologically interesting 3,4-diarylmaleimide scaffolds from readily accessible starting materials. These approaches led to the feasible one-pot construction of bisaryl-substituted maleimides which have historically been problematic.