Chemical fast-track could speed up nitrile drug synthesis

By Phil Taylor

- Last updated on GMT

Image: iStock/alice-photo
Image: iStock/alice-photo
A synthetic short cut could make it easier and cheaper to produce nitrile-containing compounds, a group which includes dozens of marketed and pipeline drugs.

The new synthetic pathway is based on the conversion of carbon-hydrogen bonds into nitriles and could make it possible to make bioactive molecules from "abundant organic molecules,"​ say the researchers.

Nitrile-containing compounds are a staple of the pharma industry because they tend to be stable and have good biocompatibility, and the class includes some widely-used drugs including Novartis' Galvus (vildagliptin) for diabetes and generics such as prostate cancer drug bicalutamide and zaleplon for insomnia.

The new pathway - elucidated by Chinese and US scientists - focuses on the preparation of benzylic nitriles, which are precursors to broad classes of hormones, neurotransmitters, psychoactive and anti-inflammatory drugs

It will "help break the stranglehold of carbon-hydrogen bonds present in the chemical feedstocks used to make bioactive molecules,"​ according to the scientists, who have published​ the research in Science​. Exchanging hydrogen atoms in feedstock molecules for more useful elements is difficult without damaging or destroying the rest of the molecule, they note.

Shannon Stahl of the University of Wisconsin-Madison - who headed the US team - says that being able to selectively functionalise carbon-hydrogen bonds is "one of the holy grails of modern chemistry."

The US group and a team led by Guosheng Liu of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC) note that current methods of making biologically-active molecules are often laborious and create a lot of waste, while the new method removes many intermediate steps.

The method - described as a a copper-catalyzed radical relay pathway - also makes it easier to create chiral molecules, according to the scientists.

Organic compounds tend to exist in chiral or mirror image forms, also known as optical enantiomers.  Whether a compound is optically left or right 'handed' has a major impact in the pharmaceutical industry. Today the majority of new drugs being introduced are made in one chiral form.

"The three-dimensional shape and chirality of molecules often correlates with the efficacy or potency of a pharmaceutical,"​ says Stahl.

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