Abstract Epibatidine (1) is a recently discovered trace alkaloid found in the skin of a Latin- American poisonous frog. Its remarkably high analgetic activity is accompanied by high toxicity. Therefore, in order to tune its biological activity, a convergent and efficient synthetic pathway was sought to synthesize epibatidine derivatives with different (het) aryl substituents. The hydro (het) arylation of the key intermediate 7-azabicycloheptene (10) ...