DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/9QCY-0G37
Defense Date
2012
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Pharmaceutical Sciences
First Advisor
Umesh Desai
Abstract
Anticoagulants are the basis for treatment and prevention of thrombotic diseases. The currently available medicines are associated with a wide range of adverse reactions that mandates developing new anticoagulants. Several lines of evidence support the superiority of factor Xa (FXa) as a promising target to develop novel anticoagulants. This work focuses on the design of direct and indirect FXa inhibitors using an interdisciplinary approach. As indirect FXa inhibitors, a focused library of tetrasulfated N–arylacyl tetrahydroisoquinoline (THIQ) nonsaccharide allosteric antithrombin activators was designed, synthesized, and biochemically evaluated to establish their structure–activity relationship (SAR). An N–arylacyl THIQ analog having carboxylate at position–3, two sulfate groups at positions–5 and –8 of THIQ moiety, butanoyl linker, and two sulfate groups at positions–2 and –5 of the phenolic monocyclic moiety was identified as the most promising nonsaccharide antithrombin activator with KD of 1322 ± 237 μM and acceleration potential of 80–fold. Its biochemical profile indicates a strong possibility that it activates antithrombin by the pre–equilibrium pathway rather than the induced–fit mechanism utilized by heparin analogs. A similar interdisciplinary approach was exploited to design direct FXa inhibitors that possess high selectivity and are potentially orally bioavailable. Structurally, the designed direct FXa inhibitors are neutral THIQ dicarboxamides. THIQ dicarboxamide is a privileged structure with a semi–rigid character, a structural feature that potentially offers high selectivity for targeting FXa over other coagulation and digestive proteases. It can also be thought of as an amino acid–like structure, which affords accessibility to a large number of compounds using well established peptide chemistry. Mechanistically, the designed inhibitors were expected to bind to FXa in the active site and function as orthosteric inhibitors. These direct FXa active site inhibitors are also likely to inhibit clot–bound enzyme. Nearly 60 THIQ dicarboxamides were synthesized and biochemically evaluated. Through detailed SAR analysis, the most potent analog was designed and found to exhibit an IC50 of 270 nM (Ki = 135 nM), an improvement of more than 207–fold over the first inhibitor synthesized in the study. The most potent inhibitor displayed at least 1887–fold selectivity for FXa over other coagulation enzymes and a selectivity index of at least 279–fold over the digestive serine proteases. This analog doubled plasma clotting times at 17–20 μM, which are comparable to those of agents being currently studied in clinical trials. Overall, allosteric and orthosteric approaches led to the design of indirect and direct small molecule inhibitors of FXa based on the THIQ scaffold. This work introduces two promising molecules, a tetrasulfated N–arylacyl THIQ analog as a heparin mimetic and a neutral THIQ dicarboxamide as a potent, selective, and potentially bioavailable peptidomimetic, for further advanced medicinal chemistry studies.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-9-2012