BCR-ABL inhibitors in chronic myeloid leukemia: process chemistry and biochemical profile

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a myeloproliferative disease originating from a constitutively active tyrosine kinase, called BCR-ABL, expressed by an oncogene resulting from a reciprocal translocation between chromosome 9 and chromosome 22, coded as (t[9,22][q34;q11]). Inhibition of BCR-ABL with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) proved to be an efficient targeted therapy of Philadelphia-positive (Ph+) CML in the chronic phase. This review mainly addresses the synthetic pathways and process chemistry leading to the large scale preparation for pre-clinical demands and clinical supply of the three TKIs approved for Ph+ CML, i.e., imatinib, dasatinib and nilotinib and three more investigational drugs, i.e., bosutinib, ponatinib and bafetinib. Recent progress on the biochemical profiling of the six examined TKIs has been also reported.