Daniel A. McNaughton, Lauren K. Macreadie and Philip A. Gale
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2021,19, 9659-9674
DOI:
10.1039/D1OB01545A,
Paper
The arrangement of hydrogen bond donors around a central lipophilic scaffold has proven to be a successful strategy in the development of potent chloride transporters. In this work, we revisit an acridinone 1,9-bis(thio)urea motif which had previously shown promise as an anion sensor and expand the series of compounds by appending a variety of electron-withdrawing groups to the peripheral phenyl moieties. High levels of activity were achieved by the most effective compounds in the series, which facilitated strictly electroneutral transport.