A Concise and Malleable Synthesis of (±)-Lysergic Acid

This Letter describes a concise synthesis of lysergic acid from simple aromatic precursors. The successful strategy relies on the coupling, dearomatization, and cyclization of a halopyridine with a 4-haloindole derivative in 6 total synthetic steps from commercial starting materials. In addition to highlighting the advantages of employing dearomative retrosynthetic analysis, the design is practical and anticipated to enable the synthesis of novel neuroactive compounds.