Development of a new synthetic route of a non-peptide CCR5 antagonist, TAK-779, for large-scale preparation

A new large-scalable preparation of TAK-779 (1), a non-peptide CCR5 antagon ist, has been developed. The route selection was focused on in the process research. The selective reduction of commercially available benzonitrile de rivative (4) as the starting material with sodium bis(2-methoxyethoxy)alumi num hydride followed by the Wittig reaction, hydrogenation, and intramolecu lar acylation gave benzocycloheptanone (7) in good yield. The conversion of alpha,beta -unsaturated carboxylic acid (8) led from 7 to benzyl alcohol ( 9) and shortened the number of steps using non-protected 4-aminobenzyl alco hol. The reductive alkylation of Me2NH and tetrahydro-4H-pyran-4-one (12) s moothly gave a tertiary amine (3), The coupling of 2 chlorinated 9, and 3 s uccessfully led to an ammonium chloride (1), A new inexpensive preparation which did not require a chromatographic method was achieved.