Chem. Pharm. Bull. 55(8) 1099—1118 (2007)

are now essential in organic chemistry and have been widely applied to medicinal chemistry, process chemistry, etc. We developed a novel organometallic catalysis and their application to drug discovery and found two new catalysts, ruthenium hydride with a nitrogen-containing heterocyclic carbene (A) and an organopalladium catalyst supported on a sulfur-terminated semi-conductor, gallium arsenide (001) (B) (Chart 1). Both catalysts are environmentally benign, because A can yield indole derivatives with good atom economy, and B can catalyze the Mizoroki–Heck reaction more than 10 times with only trace amounts of leached palladium (ppb level). In this review, we describe the development of these catalysts and their application to the synthesis of bioactive natural products.