Vasodilator effects and putative guanylyl cyclase stimulation by 2-nitro-1-phenylethanone and 2-nitro-2-phenyl-propane-1,3-diol on rat aorta

New flavonoid-based compound synthesis strategy for antihypertensive drug development

Hypertension is one of the leading causes of mortality in relation to the cardiovascular conditions and easily the most overlooked and poorly managed disease in mankind. With well over 200 drugs available in the market globally, there is still an urgency to search for antihypertensive alternatives due to the subpar efficacy and unwarranted side effects of the current choices. Present studies reported over 250 types of plant-derived compounds were being investigated for potential pharmacological effects on the vasculature in the last 3 decades. There were numerous literatures that claimed various compounds exhibiting vasorelaxant properties to a certain extent with low numbers of these compounds being successfully adapted into the current medicinal practice for treatment of hypertension. The issue is the scarcity of reviews that summarizes the discovery of this field and the lack of thorough comparison of these compounds to identify which of these vasodilators should be the next face of hypertension management. Thus, this review is aiming towards identifying the relationship between a major class of plant-derived compounds, flavonoid's activity as a vasodilator with their signalling pathways and their structural characteristics according to their vasorelaxant properties. Interestingly, we found that both nitric oxide and voltage-operated calcium channels pathways, and two of the flavonoid's structural characteristics play crucial roles in eliciting strong vasorelaxant effects. We have faith that the insights of this review will serve as a reference for those researching similar topics in the future and potentially lead to the development of more promising antihypertensive alternative.

Novel potent vasodilating agents: Evaluation of the activity and potency of LINS01005 and derivatives in rat aorta

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) present high prevalence rates in the current world. It is estimated that approximately one-third of the global deaths are related to CVDs, and thus there is still a need for novel drugs to treat these disorders. We serendipitously discovered that LINS01005 (5a) is a potent vasodilating agent in rat aorta, and therefore a set of analogues were evaluated for the vasodilating potency in Wistar and SHR rat thoracic aorta precontracted with norepinephrine, with endothelium intact (E+) or denuded (E-) aortic rings. Compounds 5a and 5b were the most potent, showing submicromolar potency for endothelium intact vessels (EC₅₀ 853 and 941 nM, respectively) and micromolar values for E- vessels (EC₅₀ 2.4 and 7.1 µM, respectively). These compounds were indeed significantly more potent vasodilating agents in SHR-derived aortic rings (p < 0.001), showing nanomolar potency for 5a [EC₅₀ 2.4 nM (E+) 9.0 nM (E-)] and 5b [EC₅₀ 20 nM (E+) 2.1 µM (E-)]. SAR analysis though PCA and HCA were performed, suggesting that N-phenylpiperazine is essential to the activity, while increasing volume in the substituted aromatic moiety is detrimental to the potency. This is the first report of the vasodilating properties of such compounds, and studies regarding the mechanism of action are in progress in our group.