Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) is a receptor tyrosine kinase responsible for the development of different tumor types. Despite the remarkable clinical activity of crizotinib (Xalkori), the first ALK inhibitor approved in 2011, the emergence of resistance mutations and of brain metastases frequently causes relapse in patients. Within our ALK drug discovery program, we identified compound 1, a novel 3-aminoindazole active on ALK in biochemical and in cellular assays. Its optimization led to compound 2 (entrectinib), a potent orally available ALK inhibitor active on ALK-dependent cell lines, efficiently penetrant the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in different animal species and highly efficacious in in vivo xenograft models. Moreover, entrectinib resulted to be strictly potent on the closely related tyrosine kinases ROS1 and TRKs recently found constitutively activated in several tumor types. Entrectinib is currently undergoing phase I/II clinical trial for the treatment of patients affected by ALK-, ROS1-, and TRK-positive tumors.

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The multikilogram production of the proline derivative 1, a key intermediate of a HIV protease inhibitor, required the design of a synthetic route able to be safely, effectively, and easily scaled up. Synthesis of the proline skeleton began with construction of racemic glycine derivative 4, via an ester enolate Claisen rearrangement of Boc-glycine 3-methyl-but-2-enyl ester (3) in the absence of a Lewis acid. After a classical resolution of 4 with (S)phenylglycinol, (S)-4 was transformed into bromo-lactone 6b with NBS. The bromo-lactone was transformed to proline alcohol 8 via a base-promoted rearrangement involving lactone solvolysis. An NMR study suggested that a bicyclic lactone was initially formed, which subsequently opened by the methanol solvent to form 8. The requisite ketone for fluorination was prepared via oxidation of the enantiomerically pure 8, using NaClO and catalytic TEMPO. gem-Difluoro proline 1 was then prepared from the ketone via fluorination with Deoxo-Fluor. During this study it was discovered that SiO 2 promoted fluorination by Deoxo-Fluor. This study allowed the production of 7.5 kg of 1 after 10 steps, in 4.5% molar yield and high purity (94-99% HPLC assay).

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