Systematic mapping of R-group space enables the generation of an R-group replacement system for medicinal chemistry

Selection of R-groups (substituents, functional groups) is of critical importance for the generation of analogues during hit-to-lead and lead optimization. In the practice of medicinal chemistry, R-group selection is mostly driven by chemical experience and intuition taking synthetic criteria into account. However, systematic analyses of substituents are currently rare. In this work, we have computationally isolated R-groups from more than 17,000 analog series comprising ∼315,000 bioactive compounds. From more than 50,000 unique substituents, frequently used R-groups were identified. For these R-groups, preferred replacements over more than 60,000 individual substitution sites were identified with the aid of a network data structure. These data provided the basis for the generation of a searchable R-group replacement system for medicinal chemistry containing replacement hierarchies for frequently used R-groups, which is made freely available as the central component of our study.