An enzyme-labile safety catch linker for synthesis on a soluble polymeric support

The development of new and broadly applicable linker groups which are stable under a variety of reaction conditions and allow release of the desired products from the solid support under very mild conditions is of great interest in organic synthesis and combinatorial chemistry. We describe an enzyme-labile safety-catch linker which releases alcohols and amines through i) enzymatic cleavage of an amino group and ii) subsequent lactam formation. The linker group was investigated on different polymeric supports: TentaGel. PEGA, CPG-beads and the soluble polymer POE-6000. From these linker-polymer conjugates 2-methoxy-5-nitrobenzyl alcohol was released by penicillin G acylase catalysed cleavage of a phenylacetamide and attack of the liberated benzylamine on the neighbouring ester group in ortho position. The model study revealed that only in the case of soluble POE-6000 conjugate high yields for the cleavage could be achieved. In the case of the other solid supports the enzyme does not have access to the interior of the polymer matrix. The application of the POE-6000 linker conjugate was investigated for various esters in Pd0-catalysed Heck-, Suzuki- and Sonogashira reactions as well as in a Mitsunobu reaction and cycloadditions. These studies proved that the linker is stable under a broad variety of reaction conditions and that the enzymatic method allows for release of the desired product alcohols under extremely mild conditions at pH 7 and 37 degrees C. In addition, the enzymatic reaction proceeds with complete chemoselectivity, that is other esters or amides are not attacked by the biocatalyst. In addition to alcohols amines can also be cleaved by means of the enzyme-initiated two-step process. In these cases the higher stability of amides as compared to esters requires warming to 60 degrees C to induce cyclization and release of the desired product.