Synthesis and biological evaluation of azole-diphenylpyrimidine derivatives (AzDPPYs) as potent T790M mutant form of epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors

Pyrimidine derivatives as EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors in NSCLC: - A comprehensive review

EGFR positive NSCLC due to primary mutation (EGFR DEL19 & L858R) has been recognized as a crucial mediator of tumor progression. This led to the development and approval of EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors which addresses EGFR mediated NSCLC but fail to show potency after initial months of therapy due to acquired resistance (EGFR T790M, EGFR C797S). Extensive research allowed identification of drugs for EGFR positive NSCLC, wherein the majority of compounds have a pyrimidine substructure offering marked therapeutic benefits compared to chemotherapy. This current review outlines the diverse pyrimidine derivatives with amino-linked and fused pyrimidine scaffolds such as furo-pyrimidine, pyrimido-pyrimidine, thieno-pyrimidine, highlighting pyrimidine EGFR TK inhibitors reported in research emphasizing structural aspects, design approaches, inhibition potential. selectivity profile towards mutant EGFR conveyed through biological evaluation studies. Furthermore, mentioning the in-silico interaction profile of synthesized compounds for evaluating the binding affinity with key amino acids. The epilogue of review focuses on the recent research that drives forward to aid in the discovery and development of substituted amino and fused scaffolds of pyrimidine that can counteract the mutations and effectively manage EGFR positive NSCLC.

Recent progress on FAK inhibitors with dual targeting capabilities for cancer treatment

Focal adhesion kinase (FAK, also known as PTK2) is a tyrosine kinase that regulates integrin and growth factor signaling pathways and is involved in the migration, proliferation and survival of cancer cells. FAK is a promising target for cancer treatment. Many small molecule FAK inhibitors have been identified and proven in both preclinical and clinical studies to be effective inhibitors of tumor growth and metastasis. There are many signaling pathways, such as those involving FAK, Src, AKT, MAPK, PI3K, and EGFR/HER-2, that provide survival signals in cancer cells. Dual inhibitors that simultaneously block FAK and another factor can significantly improve efficacy and overcome some of the shortcomings of single-target inhibitors, including drug resistance. In this review, the antitumor mechanisms and research status of dual inhibitors of FAK and other targets, such as Pyk2, IGF-IR, ALK, VEGFR-3, JAK2, EGFR, S6K1, and HDAC2, are summarized, providing new ideas for the development of effective FAK dual-target preparations.

The Development of BTK Inhibitors: A Five-Year Update

Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) represented, in the past ten years, an important target for the development of new therapeutic agents that could be useful for cancer and autoimmune disorders. To date, five compounds, able to block BTK in an irreversible manner, have been launched in the market, whereas many reversible BTK inhibitors (BTKIs), with reduced side effects that are more useful for long-term administration in autoimmune disorders, are under clinical investigation. Despite the presence in the literature of many articles and reviews, studies on BTK function and BTKIs are of great interest for pharmaceutical companies as well as academia. This review is focused on compounds that have appeared in the literature from 2017 that are able to block BTK in an irreversible or reversible manner; also, new promising tunable irreversible inhibitors, as well as PROTAC molecules, have been reported. This summary could improve the knowledge of the chemical diversity of BTKIs and provide information for future studies, particularly from the medicinal chemistry point of view. Data reported here are collected from different databases (Scifinder, Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Pubmed) using "BTK" and "BTK inhibitors" as keywords.

Building 2D classification models and 3D CoMSIA models on small-molecule inhibitors of both wild-type and T790M/L858R double-mutant EGFR

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) has received widespread attention because it is an important target for anticancer drug design. Mutations in the EGFR, especially the T790M/L858R double mutation, have made cancer treatment more difficult. We herein built the structure-activity relationship models of small-molecule inhibitors on wild-type and T790M/L858R double-mutant EGFR with a whole dataset of 379 compounds. For 2D classification models, we used ECFP4 fingerprints to build support vector machine and random forest models and used SMILES to build self-attention recurrent neural network models. Each of all six models resulted in an accuracy of above 0.87 and the Matthews correlation coefficient value of above 0.76 on the test set, respectively. We concluded that inhibitors containing anilinoquinoline and methoxy or fluoro phenyl are highly active against wild EGFR. Substructures such as anilinopyrimidine, acrylamide, amino phenyl, methoxy phenyl, and thienopyrimidinyl amide appeared more in highly active inhibitors against double-mutant EGFR. We also used self-organizing map to cluster the inhibitors into six subsets based on ECFP4 fingerprints and analyzed the activity characteristics of different scaffolds in each subset. Among them, three datasets, which are based on pteridin, anilinopyrimidine, and anilinoquinoline scaffold, were selected to build 3D comparative molecular similarity analysis models individually. Models with the leave-one-out coefficient of determination (q²) above 0.65 were selected, and five descriptor types (steric, electrostatic, hydrophobic, donor, and acceptor) were used to study the effects of side chains of inhibitors on the activity against wild-type and mutant-type EGFR.

Progress in the development of small molecular inhibitors of the Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) as a promising cancer therapy

Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) is a key kinase in the B cell antigen receptor signal transduction pathway, which is involved in the regulation of the proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis of B cells. BTK has become a significant target for the treatment of hematological malignancies and autoimmune diseases. Ibrutinib, the first-generation BTK inhibitor, has made a great contribution to the treatment of B cell malignant tumors, but there are still some problems such as resistance or miss target of site mutation. Therefore, there is an imperative need to develop novel BTK inhibitors to overcome these problems. Besides, proteolysis targeting chimera (PROTAC) technology has been successfully applied to the development of BTK degradation agents, which has opened a fresh way for the BTK targeted treatment. This paper reviews the biological function of BTK, the discovery and development of BTK targeted drugs as a promising cancer therapy. It mainly reviews the binding sites and structural characteristics of BTK, structure-activity relationships, activity and drug resistance of BTK inhibitors, as well as potential treatment strategies to overcome the resistance of BTK, which provides a reference for the rational design and development of new powerful BTK inhibitors.

Design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of cyano-substituted 2,4-diarylaminopyrimidines as potent JAK3 inhibitors for the treatment of B-cell lymphoma

A series of cyano-substituted 2,4-diarylaminopyrimidines was designed and synthesized as potent non-covalent JAK3 inhibitors. Among the derivatives synthesized, 9o (IC₅₀ = 22.86 nM), 9 k (IC₅₀ = 21.58 nM), and 9j (IC₅₀ = 20.66 nM) demonstrated inhibitory potencies against JAK3 similar to the known JAK3 inhibitor tofacitinib (IC₅₀ = 20.10 nM). Moreover, 9o displayed potent anti-proliferative activities against Raji and Ramos cells, with IC₅₀ values of 0.9255 μM and 1.405 μM, respectively. In addition, 9o demonstrated low toxicity in normal HBE (human bronchial epithelial cells, IC₅₀ > 10 μΜ) and L-02 (human liver cells, IC₅₀ = 3.104 μΜ) cells. Analysis of the mode of action by flow cytometry indicated that 9o effectively arrested Raji cells at the G2/M phase. Taken together, these results suggested that 9o might be a promising candidate for development as a potential treatment for B-cell lymphoma.

Pyrimidine-based EGFR TK inhibitors in targeted cancer therapy

Despite significant improvements of new treatment options, cancer continues to represent as one of the most common and fatal disease. The EGFR signaling pathway is considered as a significant approach in targeted therapy of cancers. Blocking the EGFR-driven pathway by inhibiting the intracellular tyrosine kinase domain of EGFR have shown considerable improvement in cancer therapy. In an effort to identify EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI), several small molecules especially pyrimidine containing derivatives have been designed by applying molecular simulation and evaluated the emergence of epigenetic mutation and resistance problems restricted the long-term effectiveness of such medication and explained the need for further investigations in this field. In recent years, the studies have been focused on genetic alterations on EGFR tyrosine kinase domain, which led to the design and synthesis of more selective and effective inhibitors. Herein, we give an overview of the importance and status of EGFR inhibitors in cancer therapy. In addition, we provide an update of the recent advances in design, discovery and development of novel pyrimidine containing compounds as promising selective EGFR TK inhibitors.

Emerging small-molecule inhibitors of the Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK): Current development

Therapy based on Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors one of the major treatment options currently recommended for lymphoma patients. The first generation of BTK inhibitor, Ibrutinib, achieved remarkable progress in the treatment of B-cell malignancies, but still has problems with drug-resistance or off-target induced serious side effects. Therefore, numerous new BTK inhibitors were developed to address this unmet medical need. In parallel, the effect of BTK inhibitors against immune-related diseases has been evaluated in clinical trials. This review summarizes recent progress in the research and development of BTK inhibitors, with a focus on structural characteristics and structure-activity relationships. The structure-refinement process of representative pharmacophores as well as their effects on binding affinity, biological activity and pharmacokinetics profiles were analyzed. The advantages and disadvantages of reversible/irreversible BTK inhibitors and their potential implications were discussed to provide a reference for the rational design and development of novel potent BTK inhibitors.

Synthesis and biological activity of imidazole group-substituted arylaminopyrimidines (IAAPs) as potent BTK inhibitors against B-cell lymphoma and AML

Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) is a member of the Tec kinase family and plays a key role in the modulation of the B-cell receptor (BCR)-mediated signaling pathway. Inhibition of BTK has been proven to be an effective therapeutic approach for various hematological malignancies, such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), mantle cell leukemia (MCL), diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Here, a new series of imidazole group-substituted arylaminopyrimidines (IAAPs) were designed and synthesized as potent inhibitors of the enzymatic activity of BTK with a half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) ranging from 13.10 to 42.40 nM. In particular, 11a and 11b exhibited stronger antiproliferative activity against AML and B lymphomas cell lines compared with BTK inhibitor ibrutinib and showed low cytotoxicity against normal peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). In addition, analysis of the mechanism of action of these compounds revealed that 11a and 11b induced significant apoptosis in AML and B lymphoma cells by arresting the cell cycle at the G1/G0 or G2/M stage and blocked BTK autophosphorylation as well as the ensuing abrogation of pro-survival AKT and ERK signaling. Taken together, these results suggest that 11a and 11b might serve as valuable preclinical candidates for the treatment of AML and B-cell lymphoma.

Design, Synthesis, and Biological Evaluation of Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras (PROTACs) for the Dual Degradation of IGF-1R and Src

A focused PROTAC library was developed to degrade both IGF-1R and Src proteins, which are associated with various cancers. PROTACs with IGF-1R and Src degradation potentials were synthesized by tethering different inhibitor warhead units and the E3 ligase (CRBN) recruiting-pomalidomide with various linkers. The designed PROTACs 12a-b inhibited the proliferation and migration of MCF7 and A549 cancer cells with low micromolar potency (1-5 μM) in various cellular assays.

Design and synthesis of diphenylpyrimidine derivatives (DPPYs) as potential dual EGFR T790M and FAK inhibitors against a diverse range of cancer cell lines

A new class of pyrimidine derivatives were designed and synthesized as potential dual FAK and EGFR^T790M inhibitors using a fragment-based drug design strategy. This effort led to the identification of the two most active inhibitors, namely 9a and 9f, against both FAK (IC₅₀ = 1.03 and 3.05 nM, respectively) and EGFR^T790M (IC₅₀ = 3.89 and 7.13 nM, respectively) kinase activity. Moreover, most of these compounds also exhibited strong antiproliferative activity against the three evaluated FAK-overexpressing pancreatic cancer (PC) cells (AsPC-1, BxPC-3, Panc-1) and two drug-resistant cancer cell lines (breast cancer MCF-7/adr cells and lung cancer H1975 cells) at concentrations lower than 6.936 μM. In addition, 9a was also effective in the in vivo assessment conducted in a FAK-driven human AsPC-1 cell xenograft mouse model. Overall, this study offers a new insight into the treatment of hard to treat cancers.

Design, synthesis and evaluation of the osimertinib analogue (C-005) as potent EGFR inhibitor against NSCLC

Osimertinib has been approved as a first-line treatment for non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients whose tumor carries EGFR activation and / or resistant mutations. To mitigate Osimertinib's toxicity caused by AZ5104, the N-demethylation metabolite of Osimertinib, we designed and synthesized a series of Osimertinib analogs with different headpieces. In vitro and in vivo analysis rendered a potential clinical candidate C-005 which had pyrrolo-pyridine headpiece. Biochemically, C-005 and its main human hepatocyte metabolite showed over 30 fold selectivity of L858R/T790M mutant EGFR over WT EGFR. Such selectivity profile was retained at cellular level. In general, C-005 is 2-14 fold more selective than Osimertinib in a panel of WT EGFR cancer cell lines. Furthermore, C-005 demonstrated robust antitumor efficacy and good tolerability in NCI-H1975, PC-9 and HCC827 xenograft mouse models, making it a potential candidate for human test in clinical.

Phosphamide-containing diphenylpyrimidine analogues (PA-DPPYs) as potent focal adhesion kinase (FAK) inhibitors with enhanced activity against pancreatic cancer cell lines

A family of phosphamide-containing diphenylpyrimidine analogues (PA-DPPYs) were synthesized as potent focal adhesion kinase (FAK) inhibitors. The PA-DPPY derivatives could significantly inhibit the FAK enzymatic activity at concentrations lower than 10.69 nM. Among them, compounds 7a and 7e were two of the most active FAK inhibitors, possessing IC₅₀ values of 4.25 nM and 4.65 nM, respectively. In particular, compound 7e also displayed strong activity against AsPC cell line, with an IC₅₀ of 1.66 μM, but show low activity against the normal HPDE6-C7 cells (IC₅₀ > 20 μM), indicating its low cell cytotoxicity. Additionally, flow cytometry analysis showed that after treatment with 7e (8 μM, 72 h), both AsPC and Panc cells growth were almost totally inhibited, with a cell viability rate of 16.8% and 18.1%, respectively. Overall, compound 7e may be served as a valuable FAK inhibitor for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.

Synthesis and evaluation of osimertinib derivatives as potent EGFR inhibitors

Osimertinib has been identified as a promising therapeutic drug targeting for EGFR T790M mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). A new series of N-oxidized and fluorinated osimertinib derivatives were designed and synthesized. The cellular anti-proliferative activity, kinase inhibitory activity and the activation of EGFR signaling pathways of 1-6 in vitro were determined against L858R/T790M and wild-type EGFR, the antitumor efficacy in NCI-H1975 xenografts in vivo were further studied. Compound 2, the newly synthesized N-oxide metabolite in N,N,N'-trimethylethylenediamine side chain of osimertinib, showed a comparable kinase selectivity in vitro and a slightly better antitumor efficacy in vivo to osimertinib, making it valuable and suitable for the potential lung cancer therapy.

C-2 (E)-4-(Styryl)aniline substituted diphenylpyrimidine derivatives (Sty-DPPYs) as specific kinase inhibitors targeting clinical resistance related EGFRT790M mutant

With the aim to overcome the drug resistance induced by the EGFR T790M mutation (EGFR^T790M), herein, a family of diphenylpyrimidine derivatives (Sty-DPPYs) bearing a C-2 (E)-4-(styryl)aniline functionality were designed and synthesized as potential EGFR^T790M inhibitors. Among them, the compound 10e displayed strong potency against the EGFR^T790M enzyme, with the IC₅₀ of 11.0nM. Compound 10e also showed a higher SI value (SI=49.0) than rociletinib (SI=21.4), indicating its less side effect. In addition, compound 10e could effectively inhibit the proliferation of H1975 cells harboring the EGFR^T790M mutation, within the concentration of 2.91μM. Significantly, compound 10e has low toxicity against the normal HBE cell (IC₅₀=22.48μM). This work provided new insights into the discovery of potent and selective inhibitor against EGFR^T790M over wild-type (EGFR^WT).

Novel Selective and Potent EGFR Inhibitor that Overcomes T790M-Mediated Resistance in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Treating patients suffering from EGFR mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with first-generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR TKI) provides excellent response rates. However, approximately 60% of all patients ultimately develop drug resistance due to a second T790M EGFR TKI mutation. In this study, we report the novel molecule N-(3-((5-chloro-2-(4-((1-morpholino)methyl)phenylamino)-4-pyrimidinyl)amino)phenyl)acrylamide (DY3002) to preferentially inhibit the EGFR T790M mutant (EGFR^T790M) (IC₅₀ = 0.71 nM) over wild-type EGFR (IC₅₀ = 448.7 nM) in kinase assays. Compared to rociletinib (SI = 21.4) and osimertinib (SI = 40.9), it significantly increased selectivity (SI = 632.0) against EGFR^T790M over wild-type EGFR. Furthermore, in cell-based tests, DY3002, with an IC₅₀ value of 0.037 μM, exhibited enhanced inhibitory potency against H1975 cells. Moreover, AO/EB and DAPI staining assays as well as flow cytometer analyses indicated that DY3002 possesses superior biological properties compared to alternatives. In addition, a rat oral glucose tolerance test revealed that treatment with high drug doses (50 mg/kg) of DY3002 did not result in hyperglycemia, suggesting a reduction of side effects in NSCLC patients will be achievable relative to established EGFR inhibitors. In summary, our findings indicate DY3002 as a promising preclinical candidate for effective treatment of patients with EGFR^T790M-mutated NSCLC.