Partially Saturated Bicyclic Heteroaromatics as an sp3-Enriched Fragment Collection

Fragment-based lead generation has proven to be an effective means of identifying high-quality lead compounds for drug discovery programs. However, the fragment screening sets often used are principally comprised of sp(2)-rich aromatic compounds, which limits the structural (and hence biological) diversity of the library. Herein, we describe strategies for the synthesis of a series of partially saturated bicyclic heteroaromatic scaffolds with enhanced sp(3) character. Subsequent derivatization led to a fragment collection featuring regio- and stereo-controlled introduction of substituents on the saturated ring system, often with formation of new stereocenters.