Global Assessment of Substituents on the Basis of Analogue Series

While bioisosteric replacements have been extensively investigated, comprehensive analyses of R-/functional groups have thus far been rare in medicinal chemistry. We introduce a new analysis concept for the exploration of chemical substituent space that is based upon bioactive analogue series as a source. From ∼24,000 analogue series, more than 19,000 substituents were isolated that were differently distributed. A subset of ∼400 substituent fragments occurred most frequently in different structural contexts. These substituents contained well-known R-groups as well as novel structures. Substitution site-specific replacement and network analysis revealed that chemically similar substituents preferentially occurred at given sites and identified intuitive substitution pathways that can be explored for compound design. Taken together, the results of our analysis provide new insights into substituent space and identify preferred substituents on the basis of analogue series. As a part of our study, all the data reported are made freely available.