Synthetic routes for phenazines: an overview

Phenazines are known to exhibit a diverse range of biological properties, such as antimicrobial, antitumor, antioxidant, antimalarial, neuroprotectant, etc. Owing to their significant applications in both medicinal and industrial fields, the phenazine framework has emerged as a remarkable synthetic target. The most general approaches for synthesis of phenazines include the Wohl–Aue method, Beirut method, condensation of 1,2-diaminobenzenes with 2C-units, reductive cyclization of diphenylamines, oxidative cyclization of 1,2-diaminobenzene/diphenylamines, Pd-catalyzed N-arylation, multicomponent approaches, etc. Advances in the exploitation of synthetic routes for assembly of this scaffold are reported in this review.