Improvements in micelle promoted DNA-encoded library synthesis by surfactant optimisation†

DNA-encoded libraries are increasingly important in hit identification at the early stage of the drug discovery process. The approach relies on efficient methods for synthesis of drug-like compounds attached to coding DNA sequences. Many reactions employed for library synthesis are inefficient and result in significant DNA-damage, incomplete conversion and the formation of side products, which compromise the fidelity of the resulting library. We have developed a wide array of reactions that are promoted by the micelle-forming surfactant TPGS-750-M that address these issues and lead to improved efficiency. Here we demonstrate further improvements to key reactions Suzuki–Miyaura coupling, reductive amination and amide coupling by surfactant screening using principal component-based surfactant maps which lead to improved conversion for problematic substrates. This work demonstrates the utility of surfactant maps in reaction optimisation for DNA-encoded library synthesis and leads to further improvements in these important transformations.