4-Azido-2-pyrimidinone Nucleosides and Related Chemistry.

As a part of azide prodrug approach, we synthesized a 4-azido analog of ara-C (4) as a prodrug for ara-C. The compound 4 was obtained from 1-(β-d-arabinofuranosyl)uracil (1) in three steps. At pH 7.0 and 11.0, a loss of UV absorption of the compound 4 was observed resulting from a transformation that was proved by identifying the transformed product 5 by 1-D, and 2-D NMR as well as tandem mass spectral studies. In NMR studies, changes in the chemical shifts were observed at positions 5, 6, 1‘, and 2‘ between the compounds 4 and 5. A molecular peak at m/z 270.1 (MH+) was observed in the mass spectra of compounds 4 and the transformed product 5. A fragment at 180.2 was identified to be the compound 6, containing the 6,2‘-anhydro linkage of compound 5. The X-ray analysis indicated that compound 4 exists as 1-(β-d-arabinofuranosyl)tetrazolo[4,5-c]pyrimidin-2-one, with the azide moiety cyclized. To understand if the chemical instability of the nucleoside 4 was due to the arabino configuration of 2‘-OH or due t...