Synthesis of typical sulfonamide antibiotics with [(14)C]- and [(13)C]-labeling on the phenyl ring for use in environmental studies

BACKGROUND: Due to their widespread use, sulfonamide antibiotics (SAs) have become ubiquitous environmental contaminants and thus a cause of public concern. However, a complete understanding of the behavior of these pollutants in complex environmental systems has been hampered by the unavailability and high cost of isotopically labeled SAs. RESULTS: Using commercially available uniformly [(14)C]- and [(13)C]-labeled aniline as starting materials, we synthesized [phenyl-ring-(14)C]- and [phenyl-ring-(13)C]-labeled sulfamethoxazole (SMX), sulfamonomethoxine (SMM), and sulfadiazine (SDZ) in four-step (via the condensation of labeled N-acetylsulfanilyl chloride and aminoheterocycles) or five-step (via the condensation of labeled N-acetylsulfonamide and chloroheterocycles) reactions, with good yields (5.0–22.5% and 28.1–54.1% for [(14)C]- and [(13)C]-labeled SAs, respectively) and high purities (> 98.0%). CONCLUSION: The synthesis of [(14)C]-labeled SAs in milligram amounts enables the preparation of labeled SAs with high specific radioactivity. The efficient and feasible methods described herein can be applied to the production of a variety of [(14)C]- or [(13)C]-labeled SAs for studies on their environmental behavior, including the fate, transformation, and bioaccumulation of these antibiotics in soils and aqueous systems. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12302-022-00598-z.