Benzodiazepinones are privileged scaffolds with activity against multiple therapeutically relevant biological targets. In support of our ongoing studies around allosteric modulators of metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGlus) we required the multigram synthesis of a β-ketoester key intermediate. We report the continuous flow synthesis of tert-butyl 3-(2-cyanopyridin-4-yl)-3-oxopropanoate and its transformation to potent mGlu2/3 negative allosteric modulators (NAMs) in batch mode.
Keywords: benzodiazepinone; flow chemistry; metabotropic glutamate receptor; microreactor; multistep synthesis; β-ketoester.