Sulfur(VI) Fluoride Exchange (SuFEx)-Enabled High-Throughput Medicinal Chemistry

Optimization of small-molecule probes or drugs is a synthetically lengthy, challenging, and resource-intensive process. Lack of automation and reliance on skilled medicinal chemists is cumbersome in both academic and industrial settings. Here, we demonstrate a high-throughput hit-to-lead process based on the biocompatible sulfur(VI) fluoride exchange (SuFEx) click chemistry. A high-throughput screening hit benzyl (cyanomethyl)carbamate (K_i = 8 μM) against a bacterial cysteine protease SpeB was modified with a SuFExable iminosulfur oxydifluoride [RN═S(O)F₂] motif, rapidly diversified into 460 analogs in overnight reactions, and the products were directly screened to yield drug-like inhibitors with 480-fold higher potency (K_i = 18 nM). We showed that the improved molecule is active in a bacteria-host coculture. Since this SuFEx linkage reaction succeeds on picomole scale for direct screening, we anticipate our methodology can accelerate the development of robust biological probes and drug candidates.