An Expedient Synthesis of Flexible Nucleosides through Enzymatic Glycosylation of Proximal and Distal Fleximer Bases

The structurally unique “fleximer” nucleosides were originally designed to investigate how flexibility in a nucleobase could potentially affect receptor–ligand recognition and function. Recently they have been shown to have low-to-sub-micromolar levels of activity against a number of viruses, including coronaviruses, filoviruses, and flaviviruses. However, the synthesis of distal fleximers in particular has thus far been quite tedious and low yielding. As a potential solution to this issue, a series of proximal fleximer bases (flex-bases) has been successfully coupled to both ribose and 2′-deoxyribose sugars by using the N-deoxyribosyltransferase II of Lactobacillus leichmannii (LlNDT) and Escherichia coli purine nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP). To explore the range of this facile approach, transglycosylation experiments on a thieno-expanded tricyclic heterocyclic base, as well as several distal and proximal flex-bases were performed to determine whether the corresponding fleximer nucleosides could be obtained in this fashion, thus potentially significantly shortening the route to these biologically significant compounds. The results of those studies are reported herein.