Multicarbazole scaffolds for selective G-quadruplex bindingElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Detailed materials, methods and characterization data. CCDC 1838265. For ESI and crystallographic data in CIF or other electronic format see DOI: 10.1039/c8cc03945c

Herein we report a new class of G-quadruplex stabilising ligands, multicarbazoles, which display high G-quadruplex DNA selectivity in the presence of 250 times excess duplex DNA. We report the synthesis of these compounds in moderate to high yields. Ligands in the series with optimal G-quadruplex selectivity contain an N -propylamino chain length where the amino functionalities are either pyrrolidine or piperidine. N -Functionalised multicarbazoles were found to be highly selective towards G-quadruplex DNA in the presence of 250× excess duplex DNA competitor.