Indanylacetic acid derivatives carrying aryl-pyridyl and aryl-pyrimidinyl tail groups—new classes of PPAR γ/δ and PPAR α/γ/δ agonists

Multitargeted bioactive ligands for PPARs discovered in the last decade

Type 2 diabetes took insulin resistance as the main clinical manifestation. PPARs have been reported to be the therapeutic targets of metabolic disorders, such as obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Previously, PPARγ agonist rosiglitazone was restricted in clinic due to cardiomyocytes infarction, weight gain, and other serious side-effects, which were mainly due to the single and selective PPARγ agonism. In recent years, multitarget-directed PPAR agonists with synergistic reaction as well as fewer side-effect have been the hot topic in designing promising agents. In this review, we updated and generalized the development of PPARγ partial agonists, PPARγ antagonists, PPARα/γ dual agonists, PPARδ partial agonists, PPARδ antagonists, PPARα/δ dual agonists, PPARγ/δ dual agonists, and PPARα/γ/δ pan-agonists published in recent decade. Most of these molecules were modified from known structures or came from high-throughput screening. Among these molecules, some were expected to be promising drugs against metabolic disorders, while others seemed to provide new insight for designing novel PPAR agents.

Important pharmacophoric features of pan PPAR agonists: common chemical feature analysis and virtual screening

HipHop program was used to generate a common chemical feature hypothesis for pan Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor (PPAR) agonists. The top scoring hypothesis (hypo-1) was found to differentiate the pan agonists (actives) from subtype-specific and dual PPAR agonists (inactives). The importance of individual features in hypo-1 was assessed by deleting a particular feature to generate a new hypothesis and observing its discriminating ability between 'actives' and 'inactives'. Deletion of aromatic features AR-1 (hypo-1b), AR-2 (hypo-1e) and a Hydrophobic feature HYD-1 (hypo-1c) individually did not affect the discriminating power of the hypo-1 significantly. However, deletion of a Hydrogen Bond Acceptor (HBA) feature (hypo-1f) in the hydrophobic tail group was found to be highly detrimental for the specificity of hypo-1 leading to high hit rate of 'inactives'. Since hypo-1 did not produce any useful hits from the database search, hypo-1b, hypo-1c and hypo-1e were used for virtual screening leading to the identification of new potential pan PPAR ligands. The docking studies were used to predict the binding pose of the proposed molecules in PPARgamma active site.

Highly efficient Suzuki-Miyaura coupling of heterocyclic substrates through rational reaction design

A dicyclohexyl(2-sulfo-9-(3-(4-sulfophenyl)propyl)-9H-fluoren-9-yl)phosphonium salt was synthesized in 64% overall yield in three steps from simple commercially available starting materials. The highly water-soluble catalyst obtained from the corresponding phosphine and [Na(2)PdCl(4)] enabled the Suzuki coupling of a broad variety of N- and S-heterocyclic substrates. Chloropyridines (-quinolines) and aryl chlorides were coupled with aryl-, pyridine- or indoleboronic acids in quantitative yields in water/n-butanol solvent mixtures in the presence of 0.005-0.05 mol % of Pd catalyst at 100 degrees C, chloropurines were quantitatively Suzuki coupled in the presence of 0.5 mol % of catalyst, and S-heterocyclic aryl chlorides and aryl- or 3-pyridylboronic acids required 0.01-0.05 mol % Pd catalyst for full conversion. The key to the high activity of the Pd-phosphine catalyst is the rational design of the reaction parameters (i.e., the presence of water in the reaction mixture, good solubility of reactants and catalyst in n-butanol/water (3:1), and the electron-rich and sterically demanding nature of the phosphine ligand).