Oxazolines are important constituents embedded in a myriad of bioactive natural products and pharmaceuticals, such as aminorex, tambromycin, leptazolines A–D, tucatinib. [
6]. In addition, these architectures frequently appear in chiral ligands such as renowned bis(oxazoline) and phosphinooxazoline families [
7]. Therefore, the fascination with those molecules stimulates substantial interests of synthetic chemists over the past few decades (
Scheme 1a). Classic approaches to build oxazoline skeletons include cyclodehydration of
α-hydroxy amides (route a) [
8], condensation of 1, 2-aminoalcohols with nitriles or carbonyls (route b) [
9], and aldol condensation of isocyanoacetates with carbonyls (route c) [
10]. Nevertheless, these pioneering contributions suffer from tedious procedures for preparing the starting materials and limited substitution patterns on the products. In response to these issues, a few elegant strategies have been reported in recent years. Tepe and co-workers accomplished the one-pot synthesis of tri-substituted oxazolines from sulfur ylides and acyl imines precursors (route d) [
11]. Brachet and co-workers reported the visible light-induced annulation of benzoyl azides with alkenes to construct the oxazoline cores (route e) [
12]. Intramolecular cyclization using allylic amides or
β-amino ketones as the precursors also paved a way for the straightforward synthesis of di-and tri-substituted oxazolines (routes f and g) [
13]. To our knowledge, construction of tetra-substituted oxazolines starting from readily accessible precursors remains a challenge and to be explored [
14]. Given the significance of oxazolines and our interest in the enamide chemistry [
15], we demonstrate the complement for the diversity-oriented synthesis of tetra-substituted oxazolines
via the heteroannulation of enamides with
α-carbonyl sulfoxonium ylides (
Scheme 1b). Furthermore, the versatility of this protocol is illustrated by a series of useful transformations of the product.