Search

A novel and scalable process is developed for the industrial synthesis of vadadustat. The four-step process is one step shorter compared to the reported routes with an increase in total yield to 49...

Btk inhibitors and PI3Kδ inhibitors play crucial roles in the treatment of leukemia, and studies confirmed that the synergetic inhibition against Btk and PI3Kδ could gain an optimal response. Herein, a series of novel benzofuro[3,2-b]pyridin-2(1H)-one derivatives were designed and synthesized as dual Btk/PI3Kδ kinases inhibitors for the treatment of leukemia. Studies indicated that most compounds could suppress the proliferation of multiple leukemia or lymphoma cells (Raji, HL60 and K562 cells) at low micromolar concentrations in vitro. Further kinase assays identified several compounds could simultaneously inhibit Btk kinase and PI3Kδ kinase. Thereinto, compound 16b exhibited the best inhibitory activity (Btk: IC50 = 139 nM; PI3Kδ: IC50 = 275 nM) and showed some selectivity against PI3Kδ compared to PI3Kβ/γ. Finally, the SAR of target compounds was preliminarily discussed combined with docking results. In brief, 16b possessed of the potency for the further optimization as anti-leukemia drugs by inhibiting simultaneously Btk kinase and PI3Kδ kinase.

Our group has previously reported a series of isoflavone derivatives with antidyslipidemic activity. With this background, a series of isoflavone analogs of GW4064 were designed, synthesized and evaluated the lipid-lowering activity of analogs. As a result, most of compounds significantly reduced the lipid accumulation in 3T3-L1 adipocytes and four of them (10a, 11, 15c and 15d) showed stronger inhibitory than GW4064. The most potent compound 15d exhibited promising agonistic activity for FXR in a cell-based luciferase reporter assay. Meanwhile, 15d up-regulated FXR, SHP and BSEP gene expression and down-regulated the mRNA expression of lipogenesis gene SREBP-1c. Besides, an improved safety profile of 15d was also observed in a HepG2 cytotoxicity assay compared with GW4064. The obtained biological results were further confirmed by a molecular docking study showing that 15d fitted well in the binding pocket of FXR and interacted with some key residues simultaneously.

SERMs are a series of important small molecular compounds to modulate estrogen receptor, such as tamoxifen. Although these drugs have showed great benefits in the treatment of breast cancer, the risk of endometrial cancer and endocrine resistance restrict their use. The reasonable designing of multi-target drugs can decrease the side effects and improve the tolerance of antineoplastic agents Studies have identified that VEGFR-2 plays a pivotal role in tumor angiogenesis and drug resistance. Besides, a combination of Tamoxifen and low dose of a VEGFR-2 inhibitor was reported to maximize therapeutic efficacy as well as to retard SERM resistant tumor growth. In this work, a series of 3-aryl-quinolin derivatives were designed to target to ERα and VEGFR-2 to eliminate the disadvantages of SERMs. We identified that compounds 12f and 13f displayed highly ERα binding affinities as well as relative intensity VEGFR-2 inhibitory activities. Moreover, this two compounds exhibited excellent anti-proliferative activities against MCF-7 and HUVEC cell lines with low micromolar IC50 (1–8 μM). A further study confirmed that compound 13f can reduce the expression of PgR mRNA, arrest cell cycle in MCF-7 breast cancer cells, and restrain the cell migration. Overall, based on the biological activities data, 13f can be chosen as a potential anti-cancer lead compound for further studying.