Pharmacokinetics and dose-range finding toxicity of a novel anti-HIV active integrase inhibitor

Pre-clinical pharmacological profile of QF-036, a potent HIV-1 maturation inhibitor

QF-036 is an HIV-1 maturation inhibitor in pre-clinical development, and its antiviral activity against a laboratory HIV-1 strain and two drug-resistant strains was determined in the C8166 line. QF-036 was also subjected to absorption, distribution and metabolism (ADM) assessment in vitro, and pharmacokinetic profiles were evaluated in rats and monkeys. The 50% effective concentrations (EC50 ) of QF-036 against the three strains were 20.36 nM, 0.39 μM and 2.11 nM, respectively, demonstrating better antiviral potential than the first-generation antiviral maturation inhibitor bevirimat. QF-036 demonstrated moderate cell permeability, high plasma protein binding ability and good metabolic stability in vitro. After oral QF-036 administration to rats and monkeys, both species exhibited moderate bioavailability, and the plasma drug exposure increased in an approximately dose-proportional manner. When administered orally (30 mg/kg) to monkeys, the QF-036 plasma concentration (Cmax ) peaked at 3671 ng/mL (4.82 μM), 12 to 2410 times higher than the EC50 of laboratory or resistant HIV-1 strains. Moreover, the plasma concentration of QF-036 at 12 hours after administration was 263 ng/mL (0.35 μM), which approximately matched the highest EC50 value of the three test strains. The favourable viral inhibitory activity and pharmacokinetic properties provide critical support for QF-036 as a promising anti-HIV therapeutic candidate.

Quantitative structure–activity relationships study of potent pyridinone scaffold derivatives as HIV-1 integrase inhibitors with therapeutic applications

Human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) integrase appears to be a crucial target for developing new anti-HIV-1 therapeutic agents. Different quantitative structure–activity relationships (QSARs) algorithms have been used in order to develop efficient model(s) to predict the activity of new pyridinone derivatives against HIV-1 integrase. Multiple linear regression (MLR) and combined principal component analysis (PCA) with MLR have been applied to build QSAR models for a set of new pyridinone derivatives as potent anti-HIV-1 therapeutic agents. Four different approaches based on MLR method including; concrete-MLR, stepwise-MLR, concrete PCA–MLR and stepwise PCA–MLR were utilized for this aim. Twenty two different sets of descriptors containing 1613 descriptors were constructed for each optimized molecule. Comparison between predictability of the “concrete” and “stepwise” procedure in two different algorithms of MLR and PCA models indicated the advantage of the stepwise procedure over that of the simple concrete method. Although the PCA was employed for dimension reduction, using stepwise PCA–MLR model showed that the method has higher ability to predict the compounds’ activity. The stepwise PCA–MLR model showed highly validated statistical results both in fitting and prediction processes ([Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]). Therefore, using stepwise PCA approach is suitable to remove ineffective descriptors, which results in remaining efficient descriptors for building good predictability stepwise PCA–MLR. The stepwise hybrid approach of PCA–MLR may be useful in derivation of highly predictive and interpretable QSAR models.

A novel molecule with notable activity against multi-drug resistant tuberculosis

Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is emerging as a serious global health problem, which has been elevated through co-infection involving HIV and MDR-Mtb. The discovery of new compounds with anti-MDR TB efficacy and favorable metabolism profiles is an important scientific challenge. Using computational biology and ligand docking data, we have conceived a multifunctional molecule, 2, as a potential anti-MDR TB agent. This compound was produced through a multi-step synthesis. It exhibited significant in vitro activity against MDR-TB (MIC 1.56μg/mL) and its half-life (t1/2) in human liver microsomes was 14.4h. The metabolic profiles of compound 2 with respect to human cytochrome P450 (CYP) and uridine 5'-diphospho-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) isozymes were favorable. Compound 2 also had relatively low in vitro cytotoxicity in uninfected macrophages. It displayed synergistic behavior against MDR-TB in combination with PA-824. Interestingly, compound 2 also displayed in vitro anti-HIV activity.