Copyright © 2022, The American Association for the Advancement of Science

Scaffold hopping by net photochemical carbon deletion of azaarenes

Science (2022), 376, 6592, 527-532

DOI: 10.1126/science.abo4282

Modification of chemical compounds through substitution of varying molecular scaffolds/cores is of great interest for medicinal chemistry.  Ideally, such substitution would be performed through a direct “scaffold hop”, in practice though a complex multi-stage process of molecular disassembly and reassembly is required.  In this study, a method for performing a direct “scaffold hop” utilizing a combination of selective photolysis followed by acid-promoted rearrangement, is described.  The reaction products are identified using a variety of techniques, among them X-ray diffraction studies which were performed at the NSF’s ChemMatCARS beamline at the APS.

Jisoo Woo1, Alec H. Christian2, Samantha A. Burgess3, Yuan Jiang3, Umar Faruk Mansoor2, Mark D. Levin1*

1Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

2Discovery Chemistry, Merck & Co., Inc., Boston, MA, USA.

3Analytical Research and Development, Merck & Co.,Inc., Boston, MA, USA.

*Corresponding author. Email: marklevin@uchicago.edu