Solid-phase synthesis of substituted imidazoline-tethered 2,3-diketopiperazines, cyclic ureas, and cyclic thioureas

Efficient methods for the solid-phase synthesis of imidazoline-tethered 2,3-diketopiperazines, cyclic ureas, and cyclic thioureas are described. Following the exhaustive reduction of resin-bound dipeptides derived from orthogonally protected diamino acids, the primary amine of the resulting tetraamines was selectively protected with Dde. The compounds were then selectively cyclized via their secondary amines with three different diimidazole derivatives ((COIm)(2), COIm(2), CSIm(2)). Upon Dde removal, the compounds were selectively N-acylated and dehydratively cyclized with POCl(3) to afford the imidazoline-tethered analogues in moderate yield and high purity. These procedures have been extended to prepare mixture-based combinatorial libraries. Details of the selection of building blocks for preparation of the positional scanning libraries based on the "libraries from libraries" approach are discussed.