Development of a Large-Scale Route to Glecaprevir: Synthesis of the Macrocycle via Intramolecular Etherification

Glecaprevir was identified as a potent hepatitis C virus (HCV) protease inhibitor, and a large-scale synthesis was required to support the late-stage clinical trials and subsequent commercial launch. The large-scale synthetic route to glecaprevir required the development of completely new synthetic approaches to the two key structural features: the 18-membered macrocycle 3 and the difluoromethyl-substituted cyclopropyl amino acid 4. In this first manuscript, we describe the route development for the macrocycle 3; the second manuscript will describe the development of a new synthetic route to the difluoromethyl-substituted cyclopropyl amino acid 4 and the final assembly of glecaprevir. The large-scale synthetic route to the macrocycle employed a unique intramolecular etherification reaction as the key step in the macrocycle synthesis, avoiding the scalability limitations of the ring-closing metathesis (RCM) reaction of the enabling route. The large-scale synthetic route to the macrocycle was successfully used to produce the amount of glecaprevir required to support the late-stage clinical development.