Optimization of synthetic route to PNA-T-OH monomers

Abstract

Peptide nucleic acids are synthetic molecules crafted to mimic natural nucleic acids, and thus, they are widely utilized in many chemical, and, biomedical applications. Although there exist many approaches to synthesize monomers to date, there is still room to improve these methodologies. With this motivation, we compared some widely utilized synthetic routes to obtain N-Boc-PNA-T-OH, and N-Fmoc-PNA-T-OH. Our results indicate that N-Boc-ethylenediamine is the most pivotal intermediate in the chemistry of PNA, and synthetic route commencing with this material affords these two PNA monomers in relatively high yield, and purity, while being very reproducible.