Design and synthesis of an erdafitinib-based selective FGFR2 degrader

• Yumeng Jin,
• Shidong Wang,
• Sihan Pan,
• Shuqi Huang,
• Weichen Zhou,
• Xiaohao Huang,
• Lei Zheng and
• Lingfeng Chen

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2026, 22, 583–591, doi:10.3762/bjoc.22.44

• growth factor receptor 2 (FGFR2) to overcome the issues of drug resistance and adverse reactions associated with traditional inhibitors in the treatment of FGFR2-driven tumors. Erdafitinib was employed as the targeting ligand, and its aliphatic amine site was conjugated with a CRBN E3 ligase ligand to

• -selective degrader, and for the first time confirmed its ability to degrade the membrane-bound form of FGFR2. This work provides an innovative targeted protein degradation strategy for the treatment of FGFR2-driven tumors and holds significant potential for clinical application. Keywords: CRBN; erdafitinib

• functions and overcome a series of critical issues in cancer treatment. The numerous advantages of PROTAC technology in targeted therapy have prompted us to conduct further research into FGFR2 degraders. In this work, a series of degraders conjugating erdafitinib with a CRBN binder was synthesized and

Identification and removal of a cryptic impurity in pomalidomide-PEG based PROTAC

• Bingnan Wang,
• Yong Lu and
• Chuo Chen

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2025, 21, 407–411, doi:10.3762/bjoc.21.28

• chimera (PROTAC) has made it a popular starting point to develop selective small-molecule degraders [2]. Currently, leveraging ubiquitination by the von Hippel–Lindau (VHL) protein or cereblon (CRBN) is the most successful method to achieve targeted protein degradation [3][4]. For initial studies, a short

N-Boc-α-diazo glutarimide as efficient reagent for assembling N-heterocycle-glutarimide diads via Rh(II)-catalyzed N–H insertion reaction

• Grigory Kantin,
• Pavel Golubev,
• Alexander Sapegin,
• Alexander Bunev and
• Dmitry Dar’in

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 1841–1848, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.136

• , including both aromatic and saturated NH-substrates. This yields structures that are appealing for generating cereblon ubiquitin-ligase ligands and for potential use in crafting PROTAC molecules. Keywords: CRBN ligands; diazocarbonyl compounds; N–H insertion reaction; N-heterocycles; Rh(II)-catalysis

• strategies is cereblon (CRBN), the target focus of a collection of immunomodulatory drugs containing the glutarimide moiety such as thalidomide, pomalidomide, lenalidomide [12][13], and avadomide [14] (Figure 1). These ligands, although prevalent recruiters in PROTAC design, present several drawbacks

• circumstances, considerably impacting their pharmacological utility [19][20], Moreover, the conventional CRBN recruiters restrict structural modification options necessary to maintain satisfactory affinity for the E3-ligase [21][22][23][24]. These limitations underscore the relevance of expanding the chemical