Recent Advances in Transition-Metal-Catalyzed C–S Activation: From Thioester to (Hetero)aryl Thioether

Carbon–sulfur bonds widely exist in natural products, pesticides, and drugs, and their activation, cleavage, and transformation via transition metal catalysis have become more and more important in organic chemistry. During the past several decades, great progress on transition-metal catalyzed carbon–sulfur activation of thioesters and their transformations has been achieved. Carbon–sulfur bonds linking to both heteroaryl and aryl groups can be cleaved to construct carbon–carbon bonds by coupling reactions or to construct carbon–hydrogen bonds by reductions. This perspective is focused on recent advances in cleavage and transformations of transition-metal-catalyzed carbon–sulfur bonds.