Structure-activity relationship study on N-glycosyl moieties through model building of DNA and ellipticine N-glycoside complex

Isoquinolines: Important Cores in Many Marketed and Clinical Drugs

BACKGROUND

Isoquinoline analogs are an important, structurally diverse class of compounds that are extensively used as pharmaceuticals. Derivatives containing the isoquinoline scaffold have become a focus of therapeutic research because of their wide range of biological characteristics. Examples of these drugs, many of which are in clinical application or at the pre-clinical stage, are used to treat a broad swathe of ailments, such as tumors, respiratory diseases, infections, nervous system diseases, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, endocrine and metabolic diseases.

METHODS

Data were collected from PubMed, Web of Science, and SciFinder, through searches of drug names.

RESULTS

At least 38 isoquinoline-based therapeutic drugs are in clinical application or clinical trials, and their chemical structure and pharmacokinetics are described in detail.

CONCLUSION

The isoquinoline ring is a privileged scaffold which is often preferred as a structural basis for drug design, and plays an important role in drug discovery. This review provides a guide for pharmacologists to find effective preclinical/clinical drugs and examines recent progress in the application of the isoquinoline scaffold.

Mining the National Cancer Institute Anticancer Drug Discovery Database: cluster analysis of ellipticine analogs with p53-inverse and central nervous system-selective patterns of activity

The United States National Cancer Institute conducts an anticancer drug discovery program in which approximately 10,000 compounds are screened every year in vitro against a panel of 60 human cancer cell lines from different organs. To date, approximately 62,000 compounds have been tested in the program, and a large amount of information on their activity patterns has been accumulated. For the current study, anticancer activity patterns of 112 ellipticine analogs were analyzed with the use of a hierarchical clustering algorithm. A dramatic coherence between molecular structures and their activity patterns could be seen from the cluster tree: the first subgroup (compounds 1-66) consisted principally of normal ellipticines, whereas the second subgroup (compounds 67-112) consisted principally of N2-alkyl-substituted ellipticiniums. Almost all apparent discrepancies in this clustering were explainable on the basis of chemical transformation to active forms under cell culture conditions. Correlations of activity with p53 status and selective activity against cells of central nervous system origin made this data set of special interest to us. The ellipticiniums, but not the ellipticines, were more potent on average against p53 mutant cells than against p53 wild-type ones (i.e., they seemed to be "p53-inverse") in this short term assay. This study strongly supports the hypothesis that "fingerprint" patterns of activity in the National Cancer Institute in vitro cell screening program encode incisive information on the mechanisms of action and other biological behaviors of tested compounds. Insights gained by mining the activity patterns could contribute to our understanding of anticancer drugs and the molecular pharmacology of cancer.