Incorporation of viridicatin alkaloid-like scaffolds into DNA-encoded chemical libraries

Viridicatin alkaloids as natural products have attracted great interest due to their unique core scaffold. To fully exploit their potential application in DNA-encoded chemical libraries that would facilitate drug discovery, we here describe an efficient on-DNA synthesis of viridicatin alkaloid-like scaffolds from isatins and DNA-tagged aldehydes. Promoted by benzenesulfonyl hydrazide, this reaction provided the corresponding DNA-conjugated viridicatin alkaloid-like products in moderate-to-excellent conversion yields, and DNA compatibility validated by enzymatic ligation and qPCR evaluation exhibited the feasible utility of this methodology in DEL synthesis. Cross substrate scope study, together with subsequent on-DNA chemical diversification, further showed the competence of this approach in focused natural product-like encoded library construction.