Reactivity of 7-Azanorbornenes in Bioorthogonal Inverse Electron-Demand Diels-Alder Reactions

In the preparation of multicomponent compounds, the accumulation of components through sequential click reactions is an attractive strategy. In this work we examined the reactivity of various N-substituted 7-azanorbornenes in inverse electron-demand Diels-Alder (iEDDA) reactions with tetrazines to explore the potential of 7-azanorbornenes as clickable hub molecules. The iEDDA reaction of 7-azanorbornene is expected to proceed faster when the nitrogen atom at the 7-position is substituted with an electron-donating substituent. Contrary to this expectation, the electron-donating alkyl-bearing derivative reacted much more slowly than those bearing electron-withdrawing acyl groups. The results of DFT calculations indicate that the reaction rates correlate well with an increase in sp(2) character of the 7-nitrogen atoms: The ease of conversion of the more stable exo conformer into the more reactive endo conformer may lower the activation energy of the first rate-determining hetero-Diels-Alder step. Indeed, the reaction rates of N-acylated 7-azanorbornenes, which have a more planar nitrogen atom, were found superior to those of other derivatives and comparable to those of norbornenes. Finally, we successfully labeled a tetrazine on a protein surface by fluorophore-conjugated 7-azanorbornene in the presence of other proteins.