Sarah L. Kidd, Elaine Fowler, Till Reinhardt, Thomas Compton, Natalia Mateu, Hector Newman, Dom Bellini, Romain Talon, Joseph McLoughlin, Tobias Krojer, Anthony Aimon, Anthony Bradley, Michael Fairhead, Paul Brear, Laura Díaz-Sáez, Katherine McAuley, Hannah F. Sore, Andrew Madin, Daniel H. O’Donovan, Kilian V. M. Huber, Marko Hyvönen, Frank von Delft, Christopher G. Dowson and David R. Spring
Chemical Science 11, 10792-10801 (2020)
DOI: 10.1039/D0SC01232G
PDB coordinates: 6Y6O (3D view),6Y6N (3D view)
Abstract
Organic synthesis underpins the evolution of weak fragment hits into potent lead compounds. Deficiencies within current screening collections often result in the requirement of significant synthetic investment to enable multidirectional fragment growth, limiting the efficiency of the hit evolution process. Diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS)-derived fragment libraries are constructed in an efficient and modular fashion and thus are well-suited to address this challenge. To demonstrate the effective nature of such libraries within fragment-based drug discovery, we herein describe the screening of a 40-member DOS library against three functionally distinct biological targets using X-Ray crystallography. Firstly, we demonstrate the importance for diversity in aiding hit identification with four fragment binders resulting from these efforts. Moreover, we also exemplify the ability to readily access a library of analogues from cheap commercially available materials, which ultimately enabled the exploration of a minimum of four synthetic vectors from each molecule. In total, 10–14 analogues of each hit were rapidly accessed in three to six synthetic steps. Thus, we showcase how DOS-derived fragment libraries enable efficient hit derivatisation and can be utilised to remove the synthetic limitations encountered in early stage fragment-based drug discovery.