Designing chemical systems for precision deuteration of medicinal building blocks.

Methods are lacking that can prepare deuterium-enriched building blocks, in the full range of deuterium substitution patterns at the isotopic purity levels demanded by pharmaceutical use. To that end, this work explores the regio- and stereoselective deuteration of tetrahydropyridine (THP), which is an attractive target for study due to the wide prevalence of piperidines in drugs. A series of d₀–d₈ tetrahydropyridine isotopomers were synthesized by the stepwise treatment of a tungsten-complexed pyridinium salt with H⁻/D⁻ and H⁺/D⁺. The resulting decomplexed THP isotopomers and isotopologues were analyzed via molecular rotational resonance (MRR) spectroscopy, a highly sensitive technique that distinguishes isotopomers and isotopologues by their unique moments of inertia. In order to demonstrate the medicinal relevance of this approach, eight unique deuterated isotopologues of erythro-methylphenidate were also prepared. Deuteration of active pharmaceutical ingredients is increasingly applied as the isosteric and isotopic replacement can modulate the pharmacokinetic profile, without necessarily having to alter the overall synthetic strategy toward the compound of interest. Here, the authors show manifold deuterations of piperidines and apply molecular rotational resonance (MRR) spectroscopy as a methodology to distinguish isotopomers within a distribution of products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]