An efficient method for dehydration of 6-carbamoylpurines

6-cyanopurines of structure 1 (R’=H) were used in our research group to generate novel compounds with high activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis [1,2]. The synthetic method to generate the cyanopurines 1 only allow a limited number of substituents on C2 of the nucleus [3,4,5]. In the research group there is an efficient synthetic method to generate 6- carbamoylpurines with multiple substituents on C2. The 6-carbamoylpurines will be used as precursors to generate 6-cyanopurines with the desired substituents on C2. In the literature, different methods are described for dehydration of amides [6,7,8,9,10]. In order to generate the target 6-cyanopurines 1, different reported methods were tested. When, ethyl dichlorophosphate was used the dehydration occurred and the products were obtained in good yield. All the results will be presented.