Degradation of intracellular proteins in mammalian cells is catalyzed with a ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS), which is well regulated. In certain cases the formation of immunoproteasome is induced and it represents the isoform of constitutive immunoproteasome.
Its excessive expression is linked with numerous immune, cancer, neurodegenerative and inflammatory diseases. Therefore, the immunoproteasome has become an important therapeutic target in the recent years. However, despite the considerable scientific input, the majority of known peptidic inhibitors are currently quite non-selective, which may lead to side effects. Because of this, there is quite a lot of research directed in discovering non-peptidic immunoproteasome inhibitors that would have selective action and at the same time appropriate physico-chemical properties.
In this master's thesis we focused on the design and synthesis of N-(piperidine-3-ylmethyl)acylamides with additional »electrophilic warhead« in their structure. The purpose of the latter was to enable the formation of covalent bond with catalytic threonine in the active site of β5i subunit in immunoproteasome that would result in inactivation of the protein. We started from a 3-aminomethyl substituted piperidine, protected with a Boc protecting group on a piperidine nitrogen atom. In the first step, we linked the mentioned substance with a morpholine derivative via reductive amination. In the next step, we attached various substituents on the newly formed secondary amine, which were different in size and terminal functional group. The coupling took place with acid chloride or carboxylic acid and coupling reagents. In the final step, we removed Boc protecting group using 4 M HCl in dioxane. We synthesized six final compounds and evaluated them biochemically, where we checked whether they inhibit the catalytic activity of β5i subunit of the immunoproteasome.
Despite the fact that none of the prepared derivatives showed the inhibition at 50 µM, the obtained data serve us as an additional information about the relationship between the structure and mechanism of action of substances of this chemical class.
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