Exploring protein hotspots by optimized fragment pharmacophores.

Fragment-based drug design has introduced a bottom-up process for drug development, with improved sampling of chemical space and increased effectiveness in early drug discovery. Here, we combine the use of pharmacophores, the most general concept of representing drug-target interactions with the theory of protein hotspots, to develop a design protocol for fragment libraries. The SpotXplorer approach compiles small fragment libraries that maximize the coverage of experimentally confirmed binding pharmacophores at the most preferred hotspots.

Parallel synthesis of 1,2,4-triazole derivatives using microwave and continuous-flow techniques.

An efficient and convenient solution-phase synthesis of a 1H-1,2,4-triazole library with potential agrochemical activity is reported employing microwave-assisted organic synthesis (MAOS) and continuous-flow microfluidic synthetic methods starting from commercially available 3,5-dibromo-1H-1,2,4-triazole (1). MAOS was used for the synthesis of 5-amino-3-bromo-1,2,4-triazole analogs 3 and for their 3-aryl derivatives 4 via Suzuki-Miyaura coupling with polymer-supported catalyst. A microfluidic hydrogenation reactor integrated into an automated parallel synthesis platform was built and utilized for the reductive dehalogenation reactions providing 5-aminotriazoles (5).

Procedure for the parallel preparation of 3-imidazo[1,2-a]pyridin-3-yl-propionic acid derivatives involving Meldrum's acid.

We describe here an efficient and versatile method for the preparation of 3-imidazo[1,2-a]pyridin-3-yl-propionic acids involving, as a key step, a three-component Michael-type reaction. The extended and validated procedure allowed us to prepare various acids with three diversity points. The method was easily adaptable for parallel synthesis and an approximately 2000-membered 3-imidazo[1,2-a]pyridin-3-yl-propionic acid amide library was prepared in a semiautomated manner.