Total Syntheses of Streptamidine and Klebsazolicin Using Biomimetic On-Resin Ring-Closing Amidine Formation

Diketopiperazine (DKP) derived cyclic amidine structures widely exist in peptide natural products according to the genome mining result. The largely unknown bioactivity and mode of action are partially caused by the poor availability of the compounds via microbiological and chemical approaches. To tackle this challenge, in this work, we have developed the on-resin ring-closing amidine formation strategy to synthesize peptides containing N-terminal DKP derived cyclic amidine structure, in which the 6-exo-trig cyclization mediated by HgCl₂ activation of thioamides was the key step. Leveraging from this new strategy, we finished the total syntheses of streptamidine and klebsazolicin. Meanwhile, eleven klebsazolicin analogues were synthesized for its structure–activity relationship study. © 2024 The Author(s). Angewandte Chemie International Edition published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.