Heterocyclic Regioisomer Enumeration (HREMS): A Cheminformatics Design Tool

We report the development and implementation of a cheminformatics tool which aids in the design of compounds during exploratory chemistry and lead optimization. The Heterocyclic Regioisomer Enumeration and MDDR Search (HREMS) tool allows medicinal chemists to build greater structural diversity into their synthetic planning by enabling a systematic, automated enumeration of heterocyclic regioisomers of target structures. To help chemists overcome biases arising from past experience or synthetic accessibility, the HREMS tool further provides statistics on clinical testing for each enumerated regioisomer substructure using an automated search of a commercial database. Ready access to this type of information can help chemists make informed choices on the targets they will pursue being mindful of past experience with these structures in drug development. This tool and its components can be incorporated into other cheminformatics workflows to leverage their capabilities in triaging and in silico compound enumeration.