As commonly known, spirooxindoles, especially spiro[pyrrolidin-3, 2'-oxindoles] are one of the most important synthetic targets due to their remarkable biological activities and stable structures compared with spiro[pyrrolidin-3, 3'-oxindoles] (
Fig. 1)[
1]. The challenge of simultaneous construction of spiro quaternary carbon centers and multiple chiral centers has attracted the attention of organic chemists in the past few years. A plethora of enantioselective methodologies for synthesis of these complex structures have been developed including ringclosing metathesis reaction [
2], rearrangement [
3] and cycloaddition strategy [
4]. Among these different well-developed methods, the catalytic asymmetric 1, 3-dipolar cycloaddition between azomethine ylide and activated alkene has been the most prevalent and powerful tool [
5]. On the other hand, the corporation of trifluoromethyl into bioactive molecules can bring positive effects, such as enhancing binding affinity to molecular receptors in the development of novel pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals [
6]. Recently,
N-2, 2, 2-trifluoroethyl isatin ketimines [
7] have served as efficient azomethine ylide precursors to generate CF
3-containing 3, 2'-spiro[pyrrolidin-3, 2'-oxindoles] with active alkenes
via [3 + 2] cycloaddition. In 2015, Wang group reported the asymmetric synthesis of the spiro[pyrrolidin-3, 2'-oxindoles]
via an organocatalytic 1, 3-dipolar cycloaddition with nitrostyrenes [
7a] or enals [
7b] (
Scheme 1,
a and
b). Later, Yuan and co-workers developed a thiourea-tertiary amine catalyzed asymmetric [3 + 2] cycloaddition reaction of
N-2, 2, 2-trifluoroethyl isatin ketimines and 3-alkenyl-5-arylfuran-2(3
H)-ones for construction of chiral spiro[pyrrolidin-3, 2'-oxindoles] (
Scheme 1,
c)[
7d]. Followed that, Enders and Lu groups disclosed separately Michael–Mannich [3 + 2] cycloaddition between isatin ketimines and isatin-derived enolates employing bifunctional catalysts [
7f,
7g] (
Scheme 1,
d). However, those achievements are limited to
α,
β-activated alkenes. Those elegant achievements provided meaningful insights for the remote regioselective catalytic functionalization of activated alkenes.