Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive, irreversible neurodegenerative disorder manifested by cognitive impairment and neuropsychiatric symptoms. The main morphological changes that characterize AD are development of extracellular neuritic plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles, loss of neurons with high acetylcholine and acetylcholinesterase (AChE) concentration, and increase in the concentration and activity of butyrylcholinesterase (BChE). The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway has a major role in neuroinflammation, which is a characteristic pathology of AD. Selective inhibitors of immunoproteasome β1i subunit showed improvement of cognitive impairment in mouse models of ADs.
We synthesized selective hBChE inhibitors based on a series of indole analogues. The length of the linker connecting indole and N-methylamide on one side of the molecule and the linker between phenyl and N-methylamide on the other side were systematically varied. Tertiary amides were obtained with CDI-mediated coupling of corresponding carboxylic acids and amines, followed by the reduction using LiAlH4 to furnish tertiary amines. hBChE inhibitory potencies were determined using Ellman’s method and compared to inhibition of structurally related hAChE. Among 12 indoles synthesized, tertiary amine 16 was the most potent inhibitor of hBChE with IC50 of 8.36 ± 0.76 nM and selectivity factor of 3800 vs hAChE. Structure-activity relationships analyses revealed that the elongation of linkers lead to 220-fold increase in hBChE inhibitory potency and that tertiary amines improved hBChE inhibition.
Pyridine-2-ones are described as selective inhibitors of immunoproteasome subunit β1i. Replacing indole with pyridine-2-one led to complete loss of hBChE and hAChE inhibitory activities. Difficulties in the synthetic procedures precluded generation of corresponding amines. Nonetheless, based on the structure-activity relationships established with the indole series, we can speculate that amines would inhibit hBChE in the nanomolecular range.
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