Design, synthesis, and systematic evaluation of 4-arylpiperazine- and 4-benzylpiperidine napthyl ethers as inhibitors of monoamine neurotransmitters reuptake

Towards Novel Potential Molecular Targets for Antidepressant and Antipsychotic Pharmacotherapies

Depression and schizophrenia are two highly prevalent and severely debilitating neuropsychiatric disorders. Both conventional antidepressant and antipsychotic pharmacotherapies are often inefficient clinically, causing multiple side effects and serious patient compliance problems. Collectively, this calls for the development of novel drug targets for treating depressed and schizophrenic patients. Here, we discuss recent translational advances, research tools and approaches, aiming to facilitate innovative drug discovery in this field. Providing a comprehensive overview of current antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, we also outline potential novel molecular targets for treating depression and schizophrenia. We also critically evaluate multiple translational challenges and summarize various open questions, in order to foster further integrative cross-discipline research into antidepressant and antipsychotic drug development.

Design Strategies, Chemistry and Therapeutic Insights of Multi-target Directed Ligands as Antidepressant Agents

Depression is one of the major disorders of the central nervous system worldwide and causes disability and functional impairment. According to the World Health Organization, around 265 million people worldwide are affected by depression. Currently marketed antidepressant drugs take weeks or even months to show anticipated clinical efficacy but remain ineffective in treating suicidal thoughts and cognitive impairment. Due to the multifactorial complexity of the disease, single-target drugs do not always produce satisfactory results and lack the desired level of therapeutic efficacy. Recent literature reports have revealed improved therapeutic potential of multi-target directed ligands due to their synergistic potency and better safety. Medicinal chemists have gone to great extents to design multitarget ligands by generating structural hybrids of different key pharmacophores with improved binding affinities and potency towards different receptors or enzymes. This article has compiled the design strategies of recently published multi-target directed ligands as antidepressant agents. Their biological evaluation, structural-activity relationships, mechanistic and in silico studies have also been described. This article will prove to be highly useful for the researchers to design and develop multi-target ligands as antidepressants with high potency and therapeutic efficacy.

Recent developments in ligands and chemical probes targeting solute carrier transporters

Solute carrier (SLC) membrane transporters remain a largely unexploited target class, despite their central roles in cell identity and metabolism. This gap is reflected in the lack of high-quality chemical ligands or probes and in the small number of compounds that have progressed toward clinical development. In this review, we discuss recent advancements in SLC ligand discovery as well as new candidates that have been added to the investigational toolkit, with a particular focus on first-in-class ligands and the cognate discovery strategies. The availability of new probes expands the opportunity to elucidate the functions of SLCs and their relevance in physiology and explores any future potential of SLC druggability.