Disassembly kinetics of quinone-methide-based self-immolative spacers that contain aromatic nitrogen heterocycles

We prepared several pyridine- and pyrimidine-based self-immolative spacer groups to evaluate the significance of the resonance energy of the spacer aromatic ring on the kinetics of 1,4- and 1,6-elimination reactions, which govern spacer disassembly. Subsequently, we relied on a photoactivation procedure to accurately analyze the disassembly kinetics. Beyond providing new results that are relevant for deriving quantitative structure-property relationships, herein, we demonstrate that pH value can be used as an efficient parameter to finely control the disassembly time of a self-immolative spacer after an initial activation.