Pyridines as fundamental structural motifs are ubiquitous in complex natural products, pharmaceuticals, catalysts, ligands, functional materials, pesticides, and so on [
1-
12]. Over the last few decades, extensive efforts have thereby been devoted to developing a plethora of elegant and state-of-art methodologies for the efficient synthesis of structurally diverse pyridine derivatives [
13]. Meanwhile, diverse radical-mediated ring-opening/functionalizations of cyclic oxime derivatives were developed to access distally functionalized nitriles [
14-
28]. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are only four radical-type examples of the incorporation of cyanoalkyl groups derived from cyclic oxime derivatives into pyridine skeletons to access pyridylated nitriles. In 2017, Guo's group developed Ni-catalyzed Minisci-type cyanoalkylation of heteroaromatic
N-oxides with electron-poor
O-pentafluorobenzoyl cyclic oximes at elevated temperature [
29], in which there were three examples of pyridine cyanoalkylation with exquisite C-2 selectivity and relatively low efficiency, and also initial oxidation of pyridines to pyridine
N-oxides need to use the oxidants, thus exhibiting poor functional group compatibility (
Scheme 1a). Soon after, Xia group disclosed visible-light-induced photoredox Minisci-type cyanoalkylation of heteroarenes with electron-poor
O-4-trifluoromethylbenzoyl cyclic oximes in the presence of a stoichiometric amount of trifluoroacetic acid [
30], in which there was no need of pre-activation of pyridines ring as their
N-oxides, and yet only three examples of pyridine cyanoalkylation (two examples blocking competitive C-4 site led to C-2 mono-cyanoalkylated products with moderate yields, the third example blocking one of the competitive C-2 sites led to C-2 and C-4 cyanoalkylated products with poor yields) (
Scheme 1b). Alternatively, Xu group exploited Ag-catalyzed Minisci-type cyanoalkylation of heteroarenes with cyclic
α-imino-oxy acids under acidic and oxidizing conditions [
31], in which there were only two examples of pyridine cyanoalkylation (one example led to mono- and difunctionalized products, the other led to C-2 and C-4 cyanoalkylated products) (
Scheme 1c). Besides the three Minisci-type reactions mentioned above, Leonori group established an elegant photoredox-nickel dual-catalyzed ring-opening functionalization of cyclic
α-imino-oxy acids in the presence of organic base tetramethyl guanidine [
32], in which there were three examples of pyridine cyanoalkylation with exquisite C-2 or C-4 selectivity and moderate yields (
Scheme 1d). Although such a dual photoredox-nickel strategy compensated for the inadequacies of the above-mentioned Minisci-type reactions, the specific activation of (hetero)aryl bromides resulted in the addition of the second transition metal catalyst NiCl
2·glyme besides the requisite photocatalyst [Ir(dtbbpy)(ppy)
2]PF
6. Furthermore, it was worth mentioning that only by voltage-directed installation of appropriate electrophores on the oxygen atom could cyclic oxime derivatives employed in these transformations undergo either SET (single-electron transfer) oxidation or reduction to generate the corresponding cyanoalkyl radicals. All of these limitations are remarkable, and thus the development of highly site-selective, straightforward, and efficient approaches to access structurally diverse pyridylated nitriles from non-prefunctionalized starting materials under mild acid-, base- and oxidant-free conditions is of great synthetic value.