Into a 50-mL 3-necked round-bottom flask, which was purged and maintained with an inert atmosphere of nitrogen, was placed a mixture of 4-(1-(5-(2-(methoxymethyl)-4-methyl-1H-imidazol-5-yl)-2,4-dimethylbenzoyl)piperidin-4-yl)benzonitrile (compound 2, 30 mg, 0.068 mmol), NaI (20 mg, 0.13 mmol), 15-crown-5 (30 mg, 0.14 mmol) and dichloromethane (10 mL). The mixture was cooled to −30° C. and boron tribromide (70 mg, 0.28 mmol) was added. The resulting mixture was allowed to warm to room temperature and stirred for 15 h. The reaction mixture was carefully quenched by the addition of saturated aqueous sodium bicarbonate (10 mL) and the resulting mixture was extracted dichloromethane (2×20 mL). The combined organics was washed with saturated aqueous Na2S2O3 (2×20 mL), then dried (Na2SO4), filtered, and concentrated under reduced pressure. The crude product was purified by Prep-HPLC with the following conditions (1#-Pre-HPLC-001(SHIMADZU)): Column, SunFire Prep C18 OBD Column, 5 um, 19*150 mm; mobile phase, water with 0.05% TFA and CH3CN (21% CH3CN up to 35% in 8 min, up to 100% in 2 min, down to 21% in 1 min); Detector, Waters 2489, 254&220 nm. The fractions containing pure compound were combined and lyophilized to yield the title compound as a white solid (5.0 mg, 17%). m/z (ES+) 429 (M+H)+. 1H NMR (400 MHz, CD3OD): δ 7.74-7.65 (m, 2), 7.48 (d, J=8.0 Hz, 2H), 7.38 (d, J=5.6 Hz, 1H), 7.29 & 7.16 (2 singlets, rotamers, Ar—H, 1H), ˜4.9 (1H obscured by water peak), 3.64 (app t, J=15.0 Hz, 1H), ˜3.35-3.21 (m, 1H partially overlapped with methanol solvent peak), 3.09-2.93 (m, 1H), 2.45 & 2.34 (2 singlets, rotamers, Ar—CH3, 3H), 2.29 (s, 3H), 2.24 (s, 3H), 2.09-1.97 (m, 1H), 1.92-1.71 (m, 2H), 1.70-1.55 (m, 1H).
