炔酰胺类缩合剂研究进展

缩合剂是指用于促成羧酸与胺或者醇直接缩合构建酰胺键或酯键的一类试剂的总称.由于酰胺和酯的重要性,缩合剂的开发成为了学术界与工业界广泛关注的一个重要研究方向.多肽合成就是α-氨基酸在缩合剂的作用下反复形成酰胺键的过程,因此,缩合剂在多肽合成中发挥着至关重要的作用.当前多肽合成所使用的试剂和技术大多是20世纪50~80年代发展起来的,这些试剂和技术的天生弊端逐渐显现出来.比如传统多肽缩合剂过度活化α-氨基酸而诱发的外消旋化和其它副反应导致的副产物成为药物多肽生产过程中一个极为关切的问题.另外固相多肽合成的低原子经济性给可持续发展带来了极大的挑战.这些问题只能依靠原始创新的颠覆性技术和全新的缩合方法来解决.我们课题组致力于通过发展新试剂和新反应来解决多肽与蛋白质化学合成领域的难题.本文系统介绍了我们发展的一种结构全新的炔酰胺类缩合试剂及其在酰胺、酯、大环内酯、多肽、硫代多肽合成中的应用研究进展.

Recent Advances in Ynamide Coupling Reagent

Coupling or condensation reagents are compounds that can be used to promote the direct condensation of carboxylic acids with amines or alcohols to furnish amide or ester bond, respectively. Since their discovery, coupling reagents have been widely used in the manufacture of drugs, materials, cosmetics and other fine chemicals containing amide or ester bond. In particular, coupling reagent plays a crucial role in the chemical synthesis of peptides which involves the iterative amide bond formation between proteinogenic α-amino acids. However, current peptide synthesis methods and strategies are mainly relied on the reagents and techniques developed in 1950~1980 s, and are reaching a high standard and their inherent limits. For example, the impurities and racemization/epmimerization caused by over activation of conventional coupling reagents have become major concerns of peptide drug manufacture. Moreover, the poor atom economy of the solid phase peptide synthesis results in large amount of chemical waste, and thus posing formidable challenge to the sustainable development. Only disruptive innovations involving new reagents and novel condensation mechanism can solve the notorious issues that plague current peptide synthesis. In this context, our research group disclosed that ynamide could be used as a novel coupling reagent to promote amide and ester bond formation via the condensation of carboxylic acids with amines or alcohols. More importantly, ynamide coupling reagents could also be used for peptide bond formation in a racemization free manner. Herein, the discovery as well as the application of ynamide coupling reagent in the construction of amide and ester bonds is systematically summarized.