Fragment-based Scaffold Hopping: Identification of Potent, Selective, and Highly Soluble Bromo and Extra Terminal Domain (BET) Second Bromodomain (BD2) Inhibitors

The profound efficacy of pan-BET inhibitors is well documented, but these epigenetic agents have shown pharmacology-driven toxicity in oncology clinical trials. The opportunity to identify inhibitors with an improved safety profile by selective targeting of a subset of the eight bromodomains of the BET family has triggered extensive medicinal chemistry efforts. In this article, we disclose the identification of potent and selective drug-like pan-BD2 inhibitors such as pyrazole 23(GSK809) and furan 24(GSK743) that were derived from the pyrrole fragment 6. We transpose the key learnings from a previous pyridone series (GSK620 2as a representative example) to this novel class of inhibitors, which are characterized by significantly improved solubility relative to our previous research.