Reusable solid-phase supports for oligonucleotides and antisense therapeutics

Abstract

A general method for oligonucleotide synthesis on reusable solid-phase supports has been developed which will significantly lower the cost of large-scale synthesis. It consists of five steps: 1, nucleoside attachment to an hydroxy derivatized support through a Q-linker (hydroquinone-O,O′-diacetic acid) linker arm; 2, chloro-acetylation of unreacted surface groups; 3, conventional phosphodiester or phosphorothioate oligonucleotide synthesis; 4, cleavage from the support with aqueous or anhydrous ammonia; and 5, support regeneration with methanolic potassium carbonate. The recycling process is fast, fully automatable, and does not require removal of the support from the synthesis column. Fifteen solid-phase supports were evaluated with glycerol-CPG providing the best results. Consecutive syntheses of ISIS 2302, a dGCCCAAGCTGGCATCCGTCA phosphorothioate sequence, on the same synthesis column were performed. A glycerol-CPG synthesis column was satisfactorily used six consecutive times when NH₄OH was the cleavage reagent. However, anhydrous NH₃ allowed twelve consecutive syntheses without any deterioration in support loading, product quality, or amount of product produced. An improved method for preparing the essential nucleoside-3′-hemiesters of the Q-Linker and an unexpectedly slower rate of cleavage for phosphorothioate DNA vs. phosphodiester DNA are also described.