Life Chemicals proficient team specializing in cutting-edge fine chemistry dynamically and successfully designs and synthesizes advanced chemical building blocks: small molecules (scaffolds, chemical intermediates, and fine reagents) bearing various reactive functional groups that allow the introduction of chemical diversity and specific structural motifs into the target molecules.
The reagent structures are mostly based on novel and rare chemotypes with favorable physicochemical parameters, thus being excellent decorators in the combinatorial synthesis of compound libraries and promising reagents for organic synthesis, medicinal chemistry and drug discovery.
Our proprietary Chemical Building Block Collection currently comprises more than 63,000 building blocks, including 13,000 in-stock compounds in multigram quantities.
Examples of chemical classes to be offered include:
- Bicyclic compounds
- Functionalized saturated heterocycles
- Functionalized aromatic heterocycles
- Small carbo- and hetero-cycles
Main chemical classes of building blocks
Feel free to contact us directly at orders@lifechemicals.com to get additional information, discuss your specific requirements, or place a purchase order.
Explore and purchase our building blocks via our online shop! There you can check compound availability, current prices, and lead time information. The compounds can be searched by CAS, catalog number, substructure, or similarity.

Further reading is available in our MedChem blog dedicated to Building Blocks and Custom synthesis.
Key Features:
- All compounds are synthesized in-house
- Most chemical building blocks are available from stock in 0.25-10 g amounts via fast on-line purchase from our e-commerce website
- Every building block undergoes thorough quality control to elucidate its chemical structure
- Purity of over 95 % is confirmed with 400MHz NMR and/or LCMS
- As a contract research organization (CRO), Life Chemicals also provides custom synthesis services to produce small-molecule compounds as per the customer’s specifications
- Our state-of-the-art synthetic capacities and skillful chemistry enable us to add over 25,000 novel organic compounds (both screening compounds and building blocks) to our product catalog annually
Chemically-diverse building blocks are used to functionalize drug-like compounds in hit-to-lead and lead-optimization projects to facilitate SAR exploration, as well as modulate and fine-tune the physicochemical properties (such as, increased solubility or improved metabolic stability).
New selected building blocks as examples to illustrate the collection diversity
Carbo- and hetero-cycles
Bicyclic compounds: spiro, fused, bridged structures
Functionalized saturated heterocycles: piperidines, morpholines, piperazines, pyrrolidines, tetrahydrofurans, tetrahydropyrans, etc.
Functionalized aromatic heterocycles: pyridines, diazines (pyrazines, pyrimidines, pyridazine), pyrazoles, azoles (imidazoles, oxazoles, thiazoles, triazoles), etc.
Small carbo- and hetero-cycles: cyclopropanes, cyclobutanes, epoxides, azetidines, oxetanes, etc.
Common functional groups
Alcohols and phenols
Aldehydes, ketones
Amines: primary and secondary
Acids, their esters and acylhalides: carboxylic acids, aminoacids
Alkyl and aryl halides
Alkynes (acetylenes), including terminal alkynes
Fluorinated compounds
Covalent warhead-containing building blocks
Other chemical classes
Azides for “Click Chemistry”
Boronic acids and esters
Epoxides
Hydrazines, hydrazides
Isocyanates, isothiocyanates
Nitro-compounds
Nitriles
Sulfonic acids and esters, sulfonamides
Sulfonyl chlorides
Sulfones
Thiols
It should be pointed out that this wide range of functional groups will open up great opportunities to trigger the generation of novel molecules. In particular, organic halides and terminal alkynes are to be efficiently used in metal-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions (such as Sonogashira or Suzuki coupling) involved in the production of pharmaceuticals. Functionalized azides and alkynes are critical substrates for “Click Chemistry”. Aldehydes are attractive building blocks due to their ability to easily react with a variety of nucleophiles. To give one more illustration, aromatic heterocycles are extremely common building blocks for a broad spectrum of synthetic targets.