The design and synthesis of novel N-heterocyclic compounds, and their evaluation of anti-cancer and anti-viral activity

Abstract

The thesis entitled “The design and synthesis of novel N-heterocyclic compounds, and their evaluation of anti-cancer and anti-viral activity" is divided into three chapters. The title of the thesis clearly reflects the importance of nitrogen heterocycles compounds: in fact they are extremely pivotal structural motifs responsible for eliciting various biological activities in natural products and synthetic medicines. This has attracted the medicinal chemists towards the synthesis of various compounds having nitrogen heterocycles as useful medicines to treat various diseases. It is also evident by a large number of marketed pharmaceutical products possess nitrogen heterocycles. In each chapter different heterocycle moieties belonging to β-carboline, indoles and isoindolinones nucleus respectively are presented.

In the first chapter we presented β-carboline derivatives and their anticancer activity on different cell lines. Our lead compound was harmine, which is the most representative β-carboline alkaloid endowed with antitumor properties showing high cytotoxicity both in vitro against different human tumor cell lines and in vivo. It also exhibited remarkable DNA intercalation capacity and significant Topo I inhibition activity. We designed and synthesized novel β-carbolines derivatives with the aim to evaluate their antiproliferative properties, to acquire more information about the structural requirements for the possible improvement of the cytotoxic potential and to elucidate SARs between substituent properties and antitumor activities. Most of the compounds were evaluated for Topo I inhibitory activity and compaired to harmine. Almost all compounds demonstrated interesting cytotoxic activities in particular against prostate cancer cells PC-3 with IC50 in low micromolar range. Compound X was found to be the most potent one with IC50 value of 8 µM.

In the second chapter we reported the design and synthesis of new arbidol derivatives as antiviral agents: arbidol is an indole compound launched in the Russian Federation for the prophylaxis and treatment of influenza A and B and other acute respiratory viral infections, but due to its relatively high CC50 value, a clinical application is forbidden. So in order to reduce its toxicity and improve its antiviral properties, we carried out some structural modifications at position 2, 4, 5 and 6 on indole nucleus and we evaluated their effect on in vitro, anti- influenza virus (HA), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and chikungunya virus (CHIKV) activities. Viral infections are in fact the most common illnesses experienced by people of all ages and they are also one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in elderly people and young children throughout the world. Currently, treatments are limited and the increasing prevalence of drug-resistant pathogens highlighted the need for new anti-viral drugs with novel mechanisms of action. Biological evaluation led us to discovery of a new potent influenza virus replication inhibitor, identified in compound 15. Particularly it showed activity against all the tested viruses, both A and B type; moreover it seemed to lead to a better inhibition of some viruses in comparison to Arbidol. This compound was also found to be a promising lead compound for the design of new HCV virus replication inhibitors. Actually, biological study are in course to better study mechanism underwent the action of compound 15, which could act non only as virus replication inhibitor but also as fusion inhibitor. Then a focused analysis on the interaction of this compound with the HA protein will be carried out.

The third chapter is divided into two sections. Section A provided a brief introduction about aldol addition to 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds and described a simple and effective multicomponent regioselective one pot aldol addition/protection reaction of β-ketoesters to a series of aldehydes in the presence of Me3SiCl and i-Pr2EtN. The analysis of the scope and application of reaction revealed a dramatic dependence of the reactivity on the used substrates. Section B described a simple and general access to a series of new phthalimidines derivatives, (mentioned in Section A) in the presence of tertiary amines under very mild conditions exploiting the aldol addition of readily enolizable 1,3 dicarbonyl compounds to 2-cyanobenzaldehyde. Recently, it has been recognized that 3-substituted isoindolinones possess a variety of biological activity, consequently, considerable effort has been devoted to the synthesis of this nitrogen heterocycle, which also act as useful synthetic building blocks and intermediates in organic synthesis. The obtained 3-substituted isoindolinones were preliminary tested on two different virus strains (HCV and CHIKV virus) to evaluate potential activity on the virus replication, but unfortunately it was found that all compounds were not active. However further studies are desirable focusing on activities like hypnothic, anti-schizophrenia etc, for which isoindolinone moiety also shows important applications. [edited by author]