Olefin Metathesis in Drug Discovery and Development—Examples from Recent Patent Literature

The olefin metathesis reaction is finding increasing use in drug discovery and process chemistry, with a number of applications now implemented at commercial manufacturing scale. Catalyst improvements over the past decade have allowed use of the metathesis reaction with highly functionalized substrates, allowing chemists to access increasingly diverse chemical space, including most notably macrocycles, constrained small ring spirocycles, and fused-ring systems. For scientists employed in the pharmaceutical industry, the patent literature is the primary avenue for communication of synthetic routes to drug candidates. While most examples of the metathesis reaction in the patent literature offer only sketchy experimental details and provide little context on reaction development, the wide scope of substrates within the pharmaceutical patent literature provides a true indication of reaction scope and functional group compatibility. The current article reviews applications of the metathesis reactions in drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry disclosed in the patent literature from January 2016 to August 2017.