Synthesis of diverse lactam carboxamides leading to the discovery of a new transcription-factor inhibitor

Expanding the range of 'druggable' targets with natural product-based libraries: an academic perspective

Existing drugs address a relatively narrow range of biological targets. As a result, libraries of drug-like molecules have proven ineffective against a variety of challenging targets, such as protein-protein interactions, nucleic acid complexes, and antibacterial modalities. In contrast, natural products are known to be effective at modulating such targets, and new libraries are being developed based on underrepresented scaffolds and regions of chemical space associated with natural products. This has led to several recent successes in identifying new chemical probes that address these challenging targets.

Synthesis and SAR of 1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinolin-1-ones as novel G-protein-coupled receptor 40 (GPR40) antagonists

The development of a series of novel 1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinolin-1-ones as antagonists of G protein-coupled receptor 40 (GPR40) is described. The synthesis, in vitro inhibitory values for GPR40, in vitro microsomal clearance and rat in vivo clearance data are discussed. Initial hits displayed high rat in vivo clearances that were higher than liver blood flow. Optimization of rat in vivo clearance was achieved and led to the identification of 15i, whose rat oral pharmacokinetic data is reported.

A general method for discovering inhibitors of protein-DNA interactions using photonic crystal biosensors

Protein-DNA interactions are essential for fundamental cellular processes such as transcription, DNA damage repair, and apoptosis. As such, small molecule disruptors of these interactions could be powerful tools for investigation of these biological processes, and such compounds would have great potential as therapeutics. Unfortunately, there are few methods available for the rapid identification of compounds that disrupt protein-DNA interactions. Here we show that photonic crystal (PC) technology can be utilized to detect protein-DNA interactions, and can be used in a high-throughput screening mode to identify compounds that prevent protein-DNA binding. The PC technology is used to detect binding between protein-DNA interactions that are DNA-sequence-dependent (the bacterial toxin-antitoxin system MazEF) and those that are DNA-sequence-independent (the human apoptosis inducing factor (AIF)). The PC technology was further utilized in a screen for inhibitors of the AIF-DNA interaction, and through this screen aurin tricarboxylic acid was identified as the first in vitro inhibitor of AIF. The generality and simplicity of the photonic crystal method should enable this technology to find broad utility for identification of compounds that inhibit protein-DNA binding.

N-Benzyl-3-sulfonamidopyrrolidines as novel inhibitors of cell division in E. coli

A new small molecule inhibitor of bacterial cell division has been discovered using a high-throughput screen in Escherichia coli. Although the lead screening hit (534F6) exhibited modest inhibition of the GTPase activity of FtsZ (20+/-5% at 100microM of compound), a primary target for bacterial cell division inhibitors, several analogs caused potent bacterial growth inhibition with negligible antagonism of FtsZ GTPase activity. A library of analogs has been prepared and several alkyne-tagged photoaffinity probes have been synthesized for use in experiments to elucidate the primary target of this compound.