The α-aminophosphonate UAMC-00050, a newly developed
trypsin-like
serine protease inhibitor, is a lead compound for the treatment of
dry eye syndrome and ocular inflammation. The medicinal chemistry
route developed at the University of Antwerp possessed several problems
hampering the scale-up such as poor yields for some of the steps,
hazardous reagents, and environmental footprint. Herein, we report
an optimized route for the UAMC-00050, in which environmental unfriendly
solvents were excluded, hazardous reagents were replaced with safer
alternatives, and are more efficient in terms of atom economy. Every
reaction step was optimized to reach a higher yield, and design of
experiment was used to find the optimum conditions in the last step.
Furthermore, all the flash chromatography purifications of intermediates
were replaced with plug filtration, slurry purifications, or crystallization.
The overall yield was increased from 3% in the medicinal chemistry
route to 22% in the process development route.
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