Designing DNA Encoded Libraries of Diverse Products in a Focused Property Space

DNA encoded libraries (DEL) are being used as a complement or alternative to traditional high throughput screening (HTS). To maximize the chances of finding chemically attractive lead material that is appropriate for medicinal chemistry optimization, for example, in the Rule of Five compliant chemistry space, it is important to design DEL library compounds such that they are highly diverse and fall within a desired property space. Currently available library design methods can be classified as either monomer-based or product-based. As monomers may undergo significant structural changes when participating in a reaction, monomer based design can provide a poor representation of the properties of resultant DEL products. However, product-based design introduces a technical obstacle due to the enormous chemical design space for many DELs. Here a new method for monomer based selections is described using representative sublibraries as surrogates for fully enumerated DEL property-based optimization. Through a series of rational and systematic library enumerations and property calculations, building-block representatives are identified and representative sublibraries are defined to drive the optimization process. A published data set for a triazine library was used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the multiple objective optimization for six properties. All of the evaluated properties for the designed library are shown to consistently shift toward the desired property distribution as driven by the design criteria.