Bedaquiline is the first FDA-approved new chemical entity to fight multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the last forty years. Our group replaced the quinoline ring with a naphthalene ring, leading to a new type of triarylbutanol skeleton. An asymmetric synthetic route was established for our bedaquiline analogues, and the goal of assigning their absolute configurations was achieved by comparison of experimental and calculated electronic circular dichroism spectra, and was confirmed by the combined use of circular dichroism and NMR spectroscopy.
Keywords: absolute configuration assignment; antituberculosis; asymmetric synthesis; bedaquiline analogues.