Potent and selective xanthine-based inhibitors of phosphodiesterase 5

Chemoenzymatic synthesis of enantiomerically enriched diprophylline and xanthinol nicotinate

A concise chemoenzymatic route toward enantiomerically enriched active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) - diprophylline and xanthinol nicotinate - is reported for the first time. The decisive step is an enantioselective lipase-mediated methanolysis of racemic chlorohydrin-synthon acetate, namely 1-chloro-3-(1,3-dimethyl-2,6-dioxo-1,2,3,6-tetrahydro-7H-purin-7-yl)propan-2-yl acetate, performed under kinetically-controlled conditions on a preparative 500 mg-scale. The best results in terms of reaction enantioselectivity (E = 14) were obtained for the enantiomers resolution performed with lipase type B from Candida antarctica immobilized on acrylic resin (CAL-B, Novozym 435) suspended in homophasic acetonitrile-methanol mixture. The elaborated biocatalytic system furnished the key chlorohydrin intermediate (in 71% ee and 38% yield), which was then smoothly converted into enantioenriched active agents: (R)-(-)-diprophylline (57% ee) and (S)-(+)-xanthinol nicotinate (65% ee). To support the assignment of absolute configurations of EKR-products as well as to confirm the stereochemical outcome of the remaining reaction steps, docking studies toward the prediction of enantiomers binding selectivity in CAL-B active site as well as the respective chemical correlations with enantiomerically enriched analytical standards obtained from commercially available (R)-(-)-epichlorohydrin, were applied. In addition, single-crystal X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses were performed for the synthesized optically active APIs furnishing by this manner a first crystal structures of nicotinic acid salt of xanthinol.

Investigation of PDE5/PDE6 and PDE5/PDE11 selective potent tadalafil-like PDE5 inhibitors using combination of molecular modeling approaches, molecular fingerprint-based virtual screening protocols and structure-based pharmacophore development

The essential biological function of phosphodiesterase (PDE) type enzymes is to regulate the cytoplasmic levels of intracellular second messengers, 3′,5′-cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) and/or 3′,5′-cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). PDE targets have 11 isoenzymes. Of these enzymes, PDE5 has attracted a special attention over the years after its recognition as being the target enzyme in treating erectile dysfunction. Due to the amino acid sequence and the secondary structural similarity of PDE6 and PDE11 with the catalytic domain of PDE5, first-generation PDE5 inhibitors (i.e. sildenafil and vardenafil) are also competitive inhibitors of PDE6 and PDE11. Since the major challenge of designing novel PDE5 inhibitors is to decrease their cross-reactivity with PDE6 and PDE11, in this study, we attempt to identify potent tadalafil-like PDE5 inhibitors that have PDE5/PDE6 and PDE5/PDE11 selectivity. For this aim, the similarity-based virtual screening protocol is applied for the “clean drug-like subset of ZINC database” that contains more than 20 million small compounds. Moreover, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of selected hits complexed with PDE5 and off-targets were performed in order to get insights for structural and dynamical behaviors of the selected molecules as selective PDE5 inhibitors. Since tadalafil blocks hERG1 K channels in concentration dependent manner, the cardiotoxicity prediction of the hit molecules was also tested. Results of this study can be useful for designing of novel, safe and selective PDE5 inhibitors.