Diaryldiamines with dual inhibition of the histamine H(3) receptor and the norepinephrine transporter and the efficacy of 4-(3-(methylamino)-1-phenylpropyl)-6-(2-(pyrrolidin-1-yl)ethoxy)naphthalen-1-ol in pain

Design, synthesis and cytotoxic evaluation of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) by virtual screening

Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses, affecting almost 300 million people. According to the WHO, depression is one of the world's leading causes of disability and morbidity. People with this illness require both psychological and pharmaceutical treatment because severe depressive episodes often result in suicide. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) are widely used antidepressants that target the human serotonin transporter (hSERT). The crystallization of hSERT and the experimental data available allows cost and time-efficient computational tools like virtual screening (VS) to be utilized in the development of therapeutic agents. Here, we synthesized, characterized, and evaluated the biological activity of a novel SSRI analog of paroxetine, rationally designed by applying an artificial neural network-based QSAR model and a molecular docking analysis on hSERT. The analog N-substituted 18a showed higher affinity for the transporter (-10.2 kcal/mol), lower Ki value (1.19 nM) and a safer toxicological profile than paroxetine and was synthesized with a 71% yield. The in vitro cytotoxicity of the analog was evaluated using human glioblastoma (U87 MG), human neuroblastoma (SH SY5Y) and murine fibroblast (L929) cell lines. Also, the hemolytic ability of the compound was assessed on human erythrocytes. Results showed that analog 18a did not exhibit cytotoxic activity on the cell lines used and has no hemolytic activity at any of the concentrations tested, whereas with paroxetine, hemolysis was observed at 2.3, 1.29 y 0.67 mM. Based on these results, it is possible to suggest that analog 18a could be a promising new SSRI candidate for the treatment of this illness.

Brønsted acid catalyzed radical addition to quinone methides

A fundamental quest for alkyl radical generation under mild conditions through photoinduced Brønsted acid catalysis is addressed. The optimized protocol does not require any organic dyes or transition metal photocatalyst. Under blue light irradiation with diphenyl phosphate as a catalyst and dihydropyridine derivatives as a radical source, functionalized arylmethane derivatives are obtained in high yield.

Non-hydrogen bond catalyst-mediated diastereoselective conjugate additions of 5H-oxazol-4-ones to o-hydroxyphenyl-substituted p-quinone methides

An efficient DBU-catalyzed conjugate addition of 5H-oxazol-4-ones to o-hydroxyphenyl-substituted p-quinone methides has been developed, affording the valuable diarylmethanes in high yields with excellent diastereoselectivity. This strategy demonstrates a robust access to a wide range of diarylmethane derivatives possessing biologically significant o-hydroxyphenol and p-hydroxyphenol moieties under mild reaction conditions.

Ligand and counteranion enabled regiodivergent C-H bond functionalization of naphthols with α-aryl-α-diazoesters

Here, an unprecedented ligand and counteranion-controlled and site-selectivity switchable direct C-H bond functionalization of unprotected naphthols with α-aryl-α-diazoesters was developed. In this transformation, site selectivities are realized by turning on/off the coordination between metal complexes and hydroxy groups. The preliminary mechanism revealed that the interaction between the hydroxy group and gold catalyst plays a key role in switching the site-selectivity of gold-carbene. This protocol potentially provides a novel design for C-H bond functionalization.

Identification of drug-target interaction by a random walk with restart method on an interactome network

Background

Identification of drug-target interactions acts as a key role in drug discovery. However, identifying drug-target interactions via in-vitro, in-vivo experiments are very laborious, time-consuming. Thus, predicting drug-target interactions by using computational approaches is a good alternative. In recent studies, many feature-based and similarity-based machine learning approaches have shown promising results in drug-target interaction predictions. A previous study showed that accounting connectivity information of drug-drug and protein-protein interactions increase performances of prediction by the concept of ‘guilt-by-association’. However, the approach that only considers directly connected nodes often misses the information that could be derived from distance nodes. Therefore, in this study, we yield global network topology information by using a random walk with restart algorithm and apply the global topology information to the prediction model.

Results

As a result, our prediction model demonstrates increased prediction performance compare to the ‘guilt-by-association’ approach (AUC 0.89 and 0.67 in the training and independent test, respectively). In addition, we show how weighted features by a random walk with restart yields better performances than original features. Also, we confirmed that drugs and proteins that have high-degree of connectivity on the interactome network yield better performance in our model.

Conclusions

The prediction models with weighted features by considering global network topology increased the prediction performances both in the training and testing compared to non-weighted models and previous a ‘guilt-by-association method’. In conclusion, global network topology information on protein-protein interaction and drug-drug interaction effects to the prediction performance of drug-target interactions.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12859-018-2199-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Anticonvulsant effects of isomeric nonimidazole histamine H3 receptor antagonists

Phenytoin (PHT), valproic acid, and modern antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), eg, remacemide, loreclezole, and safinamide, are only effective within a maximum of 70%–80% of epileptic patients, and in many cases the clinical use of AEDs is restricted by their side effects. Therefore, a continuous need remains to discover innovative chemical entities for the development of active and safer AEDs. Ligands targeting central histamine H₃ receptors (H₃Rs) for epilepsy might be a promising therapeutic approach. To determine the potential of H₃Rs ligands as new AEDs, we recently reported that no anticonvulsant effects were observed for the (S)-2-(4-(3-(piperidin-1-yl)propoxy)benzylamino)propanamide (1). In continuation of our research, we asked whether anticonvulsant differences in activities will be observed for its R-enantiomer, namely, (R)-2-(4-(3-(piperidin-1-yl)propoxy)benzylamino)propaneamide (2) and analogs thereof, in maximum electroshock (MES)-, pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-, and strychnine (STR)-induced convulsion models in rats having PHT and valproic acid (VPA) as reference AEDs. Unlike the S-enantiomer (1), the results show that animals pretreated intraperitoneally (ip) with the R-enantiomer 2 (10 mg/kg) were moderately protected in MES and STR induced models, whereas proconvulsant effect was observed for the same ligand in PTZ-induced convulsion models. However, animals pretreated with intraperitoneal doses of 5, 10, or 15 mg/kg of structurally bulkier (R)-enantiomer (3), in which 3-piperidinopropan-1-ol in ligand 2 was replaced by (4-(3-(piperidin-1-yl)propoxy)phenyl)methanol, and its (S)-enantiomer (4) significantly and in a dose-dependent manner reduced convulsions or exhibited full protection in MES and PTZ convulsions model, respectively. Interestingly, the protective effects observed for the (R)-enantiomer (3) in MES model were significantly greater than those of the standard H₃R inverse agonist/antagonist pitolisant, comparable with those observed for PHT, and reversed when rats were pretreated with the selective H₃R agonist R-(α)-methyl-histamine. Comparisons of the observed antagonistic in vitro affinities among the ligands 1–6 revealed profound stereoselectivity at human H₃Rs with varying preferences for this receptor subtype. Moreover, the in vivo anticonvulsant effects observed in this study for ligands 1–6 showed stereoselectivity in different convulsion models in male adult rats.

Carboline- and phenothiazine-derivated heterocycles as potent SIGMA-1 protein ligands

Sigma 1 receptors are associated with neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. These receptors, via their chaperoning functions that counteract endoplasmic reticulum stress and block neurodegeneration, may serve as a target for a new generation of antidepressants or neuroprotective agents. The involvement of these receptors has also been observed in neuropathic pain and cancer. Only a few ligands, such as Igmesine and Anavex 2-73, have been involved in clinical trials. Thus the development of sigma 1 ligands is of interest to a new generation of drugs. Previous work in our lab underlined the potency of benzannulated bicyclic compounds as interesting ligands. Herein the work was extended to a series of novel tricyclic compounds. Carboline- and phenothiazine-derivated compounds were designed and synthesized. In vitro competition binding assays for sigma 1 and 2 receptors showed that most of them have high affinity for sigma 1 receptor (Ki = 2.5-18 nM), and selectivity toward sigma 2 receptor, without cytotoxic effects on SY5Y cells.

Non-imidazole histamine H3 receptor ligands incorporating antiepileptic moieties

A small series of histamine H3 receptor (H3R) ligands (1-5) incorporating different antiepileptic structural motifs has been newly synthesized. All compounds exhibited moderate to high in vitro hH3R affinities up to a sub-nanomolar concentration range with pKi values in the range of 6.25-9.62 with varying preferences for this receptor subtype. The compounds (1-5) were further investigated in vivo on anticonvulsant effects against maximum electroshock (MES)-induced and pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-kindled convulsions in rats having phenytoin (PHT) as the reference antiepileptic drug (AED). Surprisingly, animals pretreated with 1 mg/kg, i.p. of 5,5-diphenyl-3-(3-(piperidin-1-yl)propyl)imidazolidine-2,4-dione (4) were only moderately protected and no protection was observed for compounds 1-3 and 5 in three different doses (1 mg, 5 mg, and 10 mg/kg i.p.). Compound 4 (1 mg/kg, i.p.) failed to modify PTZ-kindled convulsion. However, a dose of 10 mg/kg significantly reduced convulsions in both models. In contrast, 5,5-diphenyl-3-(4-(3-(piperidin-1-yl)propoxy)benzyl)imidazolidine-2,4-dione (5) (1, 5, and 10 mg/kg, i.p.) showed proconvulsant effects in the MES model with further confirmation of these results in the PTZ model as no protection was observed against convulsion in the doses tested (1 and 10 mg/kg). In addition, compound 4 (10 mg/kg, i.p.) significantly prolonged myoclonic latency time and shortened total convulsion duration when compared to control, PHT or standard H3R inverse agonist/antagonist pitolisant (PIT). Our results showed that H3R pharmacophores could successfully be structurally combined to antiepileptic moieties, especially phenytoin partial structures, maintaining the H3R affinity. However, the new derivatives for multiple-target approaches in epilepsy models are complex and show that pharmacophore elements are not easily pharmacologically combinable.