A continuous-flow synthesis of 1,4-benzodiazepin-5-ones, privileged scaffolds for drug discovery

An efficient and gram-scale continuous-flow protocol for the synthesis of the privileged structure 3,4-dihydro-5H-benzo[e][1,4]diazepin-5-one is reported. If compared to the traditional metal mediated non-catalytic reduction procedure, this approach is high yielding and does not require purification steps and therefore could be conveniently used for the generation of compound libraries for drug discovery.