“This paper presents a review of these developments helping researchers in the area to quickly get an overview of what has been reported in the literature.”

This paper is a review on recent applications of ring-closing metathesis (RCM) to the construction of oxygen- and nitrogen-containing heterocyclic molecules. Heterocycles are ubiquitous in the fields of organic, bioorganic, and medicinal chemistry. Their importance reaches far beyond just chemical interest, with numerous applications in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and industrial processes. In recent years transition-metal catalyzed reactions, like RCM, have had a significant impact on improving the synthesis of heterocyclic molecules. Interestingly, in the early 1990s, the first reports of practical applications of RCM in synthesis were for the preparation of heterocycles. Since that time hundreds of examples have demonstrated the generality of this approach. Indeed, RCM has become one of the most powerful tools to create cyclic structures of varied size because of the mild conditions required to effect the transformation and the high functional group tolerance of the catalysts.