Pengfei Jia, Wenkai Li, Jiaru Liu, Yue Wang, Yongqiang Xu, Yuhan Zhou, Jingping Qu, Baomin Wang
N-N atropisomers have attracted considerable interest owing to their distinctive stereochemical properties and presence in various biologically active molecules and chiral catalysts. Herein, we report the desymmetrization of indole-derived maleimides via asymmetric Michael addition. This reaction simultaneously establishes N-N axial chirality and remote vicinal quaternary-tertiary stereocenters, delivering the corresponding products in excellent yield with high degrees of stereocontrol (up to 99% yield, up to 99% ee, >20:1 dr).