Improved Synthesis of the Selected Serine Protease uPA Inhibitor UAMC-00050, a Lead Compound for the Treatment of Dry Eye Disease

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.