Structural re-positioning, in silico molecular modelling, oxidative degradation, and biological screening of linagliptin as adenosine 3 receptor (ADORA3) modulators targeting hepatocellular carcinoma

Chemical entities with structural diversity were introduced as candidates targeting adenosine receptor with different clinical activities, containing 3,7-dihydro-1H-purine-2,6-dione, especially adenosine 3 receptors (ADORA3). Our initial approach started with pharmacophore screening of ADORA3 modulators; to choose linagliptin (LIN), approved anti-diabetic drug as Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, to be studied for its modulating effect towards ADORA3. This was followed by generation, purification, analytical method development, and structural elucidation of oxidative degraded product (DEG). Both of LIN and DEG showed inhibitory profile against hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines with induction of apoptosis at G2/M phase with increase in caspase-3 levels, accompanied by a downregulation in gene and protein expression levels of ADORA3 with a subsequent increase in cAMP. Quantitative in vitro assessment of LIN binding affinity against ADORA3 was also performed to exhibit inhibitory profile at Ki of 37.7 nM. In silico molecular modelling showing binding affinity of LIN and DEG towards ADORA3 was conducted.

Synthesis and Characterization of Process-Related Impurities of Antidiabetic Drug Linagliptin

Linagliptin, a xanthine derivative, is a highly potent, selective, long-acting and orally bioavailable DPP-4 inhibitor for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. During the process development of linagliptin, five new process-related impurities were detected by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). All these impurities were identified, synthesized, and subsequently characterized by their respective spectral data (MS, HRMS, ¹H-NMR, ¹³C-NMR and IR) as described in this article. The identification of these impurities should be useful for quality control and the validation of the analytical method in the manufacture of linagliptin.

[A novel dipeptidyl peptidase IV inhibitors developed through scaffold hopping and drug splicing strategy]

Though all the marketed drugs of dipeptidyl peptidase IV inhibitors are structurally different, their inherent correlation is worthy of further investigation. Herein we rapidly discovered a novel DPP-IV inhibitor 8g (IC50 = 4.9 nmol.L-1) which exhibits as good activity and selectivity as the market drugs through scaffold hopping and drug splicing strategies based on alogliptin and linagliptin. This study demonstrated that the employment of classic medicinal chemistry strategy to the marketed drugs with specific target is an efficient approach to discover novel bioactive molecules.