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Updated: Jun 22, 2025

Chemoselective Modification of Viral Surfaces via Bioorthogonal Click Chemistry
Published on: August 19, 2012
Enabling Modular Click Chemistry Library through Sequential Ligations of Carboxylic Acids and Amines
Sheng-Cai Wang1, Xiang Zhou1,2, Ying-Xian Li1
1State Key Laboratory of Anti-Infective Drug Discovery and Development, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Chiral Molecule and Drug Discovery, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, 510006, Guangzhou, China.
Abstract:
High-throughput synthesis and screening of chemical libraries play pivotal roles in drug discovery. Click chemistry has emerged as a powerful strategy for constructing highly modular chemical libraries. However, the development of new click reactions and unlocking new clickable building blocks remain exceedingly challenging. Herein, we describe a double-click strategy that enables the sequential ligations of widely available carboxylic acids and amines with fluorosulfuryl isocyanate (FSO2NCO) via a modular amidation/SuFEx (sulfur-fluoride exchange) process. This method provides facile access to chemical libraries of N-fluorosulfonyl amides (RCONHSO2F) and N-acylsulfamides (RCONHSO2NR'R'') in near-quantitative yields under simple and practical conditions. The robustness and efficiency of this double click strategy is showcased by the facile construction of chemical libraries in 96-well microtiter plates from a large number of carboxylic acids and amines. Preliminary biological activity screening reveals that some compounds exhibit high antimicrobial activities against Gram-positive bacterium S. aureus and drug-resistant MRSA (MIC up to 6.25 μg ⋅ mL-1). These results provide compelling evidence for the potential application of modular click chemistry library as an enabling technology in high-throughput medicinal chemistry.
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