High-throughput screening is the dominant method used to identify lead compounds in drug discovery. As such, the makeup of screening libraries largely dictates the biological targets that can be modulated and the therapeutics that can be developed. Unfortunately, most compound-screening collections consist principally of planar molecules with little structural or stereochemical complexity, compounds that do not offer the arrangement of chemical functionality necessary for the modulation of many drug targets. Here we describe a novel, general and facile strategy for the creation of diverse compounds with high structural and stereochemical complexity using readily available natural products as synthetic starting points. We show through the evaluation of chemical properties (which include fraction of sp3 carbons, ClogP and the number of stereogenic centres) that these compounds are significantly more complex and diverse than those in standard screening collections, and we give guidelines for the application of this strategy to any suitable natural product. An approach for the construction of complex and diverse compound libraries is described, whereby natural products are altered through a series of ring system distortion reactions. The compounds produced have markedly different physiochemical properties from those in standard screening collections and thus could offer advantages in the search for lead molecules that can be developed into drug candidates.
高通量筛选是药物发现过程中确定先导化合物的主要方法。因此,筛选库的组成在很大程度上决定了可调节的
生物靶点和可开发的治疗方法。遗憾的是,大多数化合物筛选库主要由结构或立体
化学复杂性较低的平面分子组成,这些化合物无法提供调节许多药物靶点所需的
化学功能排列。在这里,我们介绍了一种新颖、通用和简便的策略,即利用现成的
天然产物作为合成起点,创造出具有高结构和立体
化学复杂性的多种化合物。我们通过对
化学性质(包括 sp3
碳的比例、ClogP 和立体中心的数量)的评估表明,这些化合物的复杂性和多样性明显高于标准筛选集合中的化合物。本文介绍了一种构建复杂多样化合物库的方法,即通过一系列环系统畸变反应改变
天然产物。生成的化合物与标准筛选库中的化合物具有明显不同的理化性质,因此在寻找可开发成候选药物的先导分子方面具有优势。