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A new set of amino-3,5-dicyanopyridines was synthesized and biologically evaluated at the adenosine receptors (ARs). This chemical class is particularly versatile, as small structural modifications can influence not only affinity and selectivity, but also the pharmacological profile. Thus, in order to deepen the structure–activity relationships (SARs) of this series, different substituents were evaluated at the diverse positions on the dicyanopyridine scaffold. In general, the herein reported compounds show nanomolar binding affinity and interact better with both the human (h) A1 and A2A ARs than with the other subtypes. Docking studies at hAR structure were performed to rationalize the observed affinity data. Of interest are compounds 1 and 5, which can be considered as pan ligands as binding all the ARs with comparable nanomolar binding affinity (A1AR: 1, Ki = 9.63 nM; 5, Ki = 2.50 nM; A2AAR: 1, Ki = 21 nM; 5, Ki = 24 nM; A3AR: 1, Ki = 52 nM; 5, Ki = 25 nM; A2BAR: 1, EC50 = 1.4 nM; 5, EC50 = 1.12 nM). Moreover, these compounds showed a partial agonist profile at all the ARs. This combined AR partial agonist activity could lead us to hypothesize a potential effect in the repair process of damaged tissue that would be beneficial in both wound healing and remodeling.

The therapeutic use of A2A adenosine receptor (AR) antagonists for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson and Alzheimer diseases, is a very promising approach. Moreover, the potential therapeutic role of A2A AR antagonists to avoid both immunoescaping of tumor cells and tumor development is well documented. Herein, we report on the synthesis and biological evaluation of a new set of piperazine- and piperidine- containing 7-amino-2-(furan-2-yl)thiazolo[5,4-d]pyrimidine derivatives designed as human A2A AR antagonists/inverse agonists. Binding and potency data indicated that a good number of potent and selective hA2A AR inverse agonists were found. Amongst them, the 2-(furan-2-yl)-N5-(2-(4-phenylpiperazin-1-yl)ethyl)thiazolo[5,4-d]pyrimidine-5,7-diamine 11 exhibited the highest A2A AR binding affinity (Ki = 8.62 nM) as well as inverse agonist potency (IC50 = 7.42 nM). In addition, bioinformatics prediction using the web tool SwissADME revealed that 8, 11, and 19 possessed good drug-likeness profiles.

The amino-3,5-dicyanopyridine derivatives belong to an intriguing series of adenosine receptor (AR) ligands that has been developed by both academic researchers and industry. Indeed, the studies carried out to date underline the versatility of the dicyanopyridine scaffold to obtain AR ligands with not only a wide range of affinities but also with diverse degrees of efficacies at the different ARs. These observations prompted us to investigate on the structure–activity relationships (SARs) of this series leading to important previously reported results. The present SAR study has helped to confirm the 1H-imidazol-2-yl group at R2 position as an important feature for producing potent AR agonists. Moreover, the nature of the R1 substituent highly affects not only affinity/activity at the hA1 and hA2B ARs but also selectivity versus the other subtypes. Potent hA1 and hA2B AR ligands were developed, and among them, the 2-amino-6-[(1H-imidazol-2-ylmethyl)sulfanyl]-4-[4-(prop-2-en-1-yloxy)phenyl]pyridine-3,5-dicarbonitrile (3) is active in the low nanomolar range at these subtypes and shows a good trend of selectivity versus both the hA2A and hA3 ARs. This combined hA1/hA2B partial agonist activity leads to a synergistic effect on glucose homeostasis and could potentially be beneficial in treating diabetes and related complications.