An NMR Method To Identify Nondestructively Chemical Compounds Bound to a Single Solid-Phase-Synthesis Bead for Combinatorial Chemistry Applications

NMR methods in combinatorial chemistry

The use of NMR spectroscopy in combinatorial chemistry has provided a versatile tool for monitoring combinatorial chemistry reactions and for assessing ligand-receptor interactions. The application of magic angle spinning NMR is widespread and has allowed structure determination to be performed on compounds attached to solid supports. A variety of two-dimensional NMR techniques have been applied to enhance the usability of the magic angle spinning NMR data. New developments for solution NMR analysis include high performance liquid chromatography, NMR, mass spectroscopy and flow NMR. NMR based methods currently being investigated may prove valuable as compound screening tools.

Will combinatorial chemistry deliver real medicines?

Over the next decade, the impact of library synthesis will play a major role in shortening the lead optimization phase of drug discovery. The prognosis for combinatorial chemistry to discover fundamentally different new classes of therapeutically active small molecules against some of the more difficult biological targets is less certain. Expectations are high because the technology potentially allows us to sample available drug space by synthesizing all possible small molecule ligands (variously estimated to be between 10(30)-10(50) compounds). Some caution is advised, however, since, despite recent increases in high-throughput screening of substantially greater numbers of synthetic compounds and natural products, we are not routinely finding a plethora of new structures. The outcome may be that combinational chemistry offers us the ability to work faster on finding ligands for well-established tractable targets, such as G-protein-coupled receptors, ion channels or proteases, rather than, say, the more complex protein-protein interactions which from the majority of targets in signal transduction pathways.

Isotope or mass encoding of combinatorial libraries

BACKGROUND

Combinatorial chemistry using solid-phase synthesis is a rapidly developing technology that can result in a significant reduction in the time required to find and optimize lead compounds. The application of this approach to traditional medicinal chemistry has led to the construction of libraries of small organic molecules on resin beads. A major difficulty in developing large combinatorial libraries is the lack of a facile encoding and decoding methodology to identify active compounds.

RESULTS

Several encoding schemes are described which use the ability of mass spectrometry to ascertain isotopic distributions. Molecular tags are attached to resin beads in parallel or on the linker used for chemical library synthesis. The tags are encoded via a controlled ratio of a number of stable isotopes on the tagging molecules, and range from a single to a complex isotopic distribution.

CONCLUSIONS

A novel coding scheme is described that is useful for the generation of large encoded combinatorial libraries. The code can be cleaved after assay and analyzed by mass spectrometry in an automated fashion. An important element of the combinatorial discovery process is the ability to extract the structure-activity relationship (SAR) information made available by library screening. The speed and sensitivity of the mass-encoding scheme has the potential to determine the full SAR for a given library.