Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 14, Issue 12, 2014

Short sequence amino acids or oligopeptides have recently garnered attention for use as treatments for a myriad of dermatologic disorders due to their ability to effect and modulate various biological processes in the epidermis and dermis, rendering them promising candidates as medical and cosmeceutical therapeutics. Major advantages include their relative ease of synthesis and multitude of modifications that can be applied to enhance potency, affinity, specificity, hydrophilicity or hydrophobicity and cytotoxicity. Given the photoprotective effects of eumelanin on skin, there has been substantial interest in developing agents, particularly α-MSH analogs, that can induce ‘sunless tanning’ helping reduce risk of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer. In this mini review, we present some of the recent and leading peptide modulators of melanogenesis with relevant clinical data and medical indications. Short sequence oligopeptides with tyrosinase inhibitory activity that can significantly reduce hyperpigmentation, as well α-MSH analogs that can enhance eumelanogenesis, are currently being clinically tested for treatment of erythropoietic protoporphyria, polymorphous light eruption, solar urticaria, actinic keratosis, and “sunless tanning”. Success in developing such products can help reduce the incidence of skin cancer, one that surpasses that of all other human cancers combined.

Tyrosinase is a multifunctional copper-containing enzyme widely distributed in plants and animals, which catalyzes both the hydroxylation of tyrosine into o-diphenols and the oxidation of o-diphenols into o-quinones. Tyrosinase is known to be a key enzyme for melanin biosynthesis in plants and animals. Tyrosinase inhibitors, therefore, can be clinically useful for the treatment of some dermatological disorders associated with melanin hyperpigmentation. They also find uses in cosmetics for whitening and depigmentation after sunburn. This review describes 236 compounds obtained from terrestrial and marine plants, animals, microorganisms and macrofungi which have been shown to inhibit tyrosinase. The mechanism of action of tyrosinase, together with the mode of action of inhibitors is described. The relative activities of the different compounds are recorded. The literature on plant-origin inhibitors is extensive, and their chemistry and biological activity have been intensively reviewed. This review will therefore be deliberately cover new classes of inhibitors from terrestrial and marine plants, animals, microorganisms and macrofungi, as well as the traditional classes. The present paper summarizes and discusses the scientific results on the discovery of natural tyrosinase inhibitors.

A newly series of isatin derivatives (6a-t) containing alkyl/aryl urea groups were synthesized and their inhibitory effects on the diphenolase activity of banana tyrosinase were evaluated. Tyrosinase was purified from banana on an affinity gel comprised of Sepharose 4B-L-tyrosine-p-aminobenzoic acid. The results showed that all the synthesized compounds inhibited the tyrosinase enzyme activity. Among them, 1-(2,3-dioxoindolin-5-yl)-3-(4-nitrophenyl)urea (6l) was found to be most active compound (Ki = 24.96 μM). The inhibition kinetics was analysed by Lineweaver-Burk double reciprocal plots. It revealed that compound 6l was a competitive inhibitor. According to results of structure-activity relationship, generally, the compounds electron-donating group bonded to the phenyl ring have higher inhibitory activity against tyrosinase than halogen group bonded to the phenyl ring. The inhibitory activities of alkyl urea substituted compounds decreased with increasing carbon number of the alkyl groups at urea moiety. The halogen series at the para position of the phenyl ring showed a qualitative relationship for higher inhibitory activity with increasing size and polarizability. HOMOLUMO energy levels and dipole moments of some selected compounds (6a, 6d, 6h, 6l and 6o) were also calculated by Gaussian software.

Melanoma incidence continues to rise due to intentional exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UVR) from sunlight and indoor tanning beds. Eumelanin exhibits photoprotective effects; thus, agents that induce its synthesis offer a means for sunless tanning without UVR damage. Herein, we report the development of two pentapeptides, P9 and P10, capable of enhancing melanin synthesis in B16 melanoma cells by activating mushroom and mouse tyrosinases without any effect on cell viability or proliferation. P9 and P10 significantly increased melanin content in a dose-dependent manner comparable to the positive controls, IBMX, scoparone, and α-MSH. However, unlike IBMX and scoparone, but similar to α-MSH, P9 and P10 were able to reverse 6BH4-dependent tyrosinase inhibition. We hypothesize that P9 and P10 allosterically activate tyrosinase and consequently enhance epidermal melanin synthesis. P9 and P10 may offer an alternative to tanning bed use and non-photoprotective tanning products. Moreover, sustained increase of melanin content in skin has the potential to reduce symptoms of photosensitivity disorders such as erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP), solar urticaria (SU) and polymorphic light eruption (PLE), which lack fully effective treatments and result in significant morbidity.

Current evidence suggests that endogenous dopamine may act as a neurotoxin following its oxidation to an oquinone and reaction with cellular thiols, which are neutoxic, which may occur spontaneously or via reaction with tyrosinase or some other enzymes. Tyrosinase (E.C. 1.14.18.1) with two cupper ions coordinated by three histidines is a bifunctional enzyme that catalyses both the hydroxylation of tyrosine to L-DOPA and the consequent oxidation of the resulting catechol-containing species to an o-quinone. Therefore, tyrosinase may play a role in neuromelanin formation in the brain and could be central to dopamine neurotoxicity by contributing to the neurodegeneration associated with Parkinson’s disease. In the present study, inhibitory effect of ascorbic acid against tyrosinase has been investigated and it has shown a remarkable inhibitory effect in in vitro assays. Then, the in silico-based experiments established through molecular docking calculations and scoring, docking search algorithm, and data plotting indicated that ascorbic acid is strong inhibitor of tyrosinase by interacting with four amino acid units (histidine 263, serine 282, phenylalanine 264, and valin 283) in the active site of the enzyme. The compound also had two long distant hydrogen bindings with Cu1 and Cu2 with distances of 3.57 and 3.41 A, respectively, through its O5 atom.

The tyrosinase is a bifunctional, copper-containing enzyme widely distributed in the phylogenetic tree. This enzyme is involved in the production of melanin and some other pigments in humans, animals and plants, including skin pigmentations in mammals, and browning process in plants and vegetables. Therefore, enzyme inhibitors has been under the attention of the scientist community, due to its broad applications in food, cosmetic, agricultural and medicinal fields, to avoid the undesirable effects of abnormal melanin overproduction. However, the research of novel chemical with antityrosinase activity demands the use of more efficient tools to speed up the tyrosinase inhibitors discovery process. This chapter is focused in the different components of a predictive modeling workflow for the identification and prioritization of potential new compounds with activity against the tyrosinase enzyme. In this case, two structure chemical libraries Spectrum Collection and Drugbank are used in this attempt to combine different virtual screening data mining techniques, in a sequential manner helping to avoid the usually expensive and time consuming traditional methods. Some of the sequential steps summarize here comprise the use of drug-likeness filters, similarity searching, classification and potency QSAR multiclassifier systems, modeling molecular interactions systems, and similarity/diversity analysis. Finally, the methodologies showed here provide a rational workflow for virtual screening hit analysis and selection as a promissory drug discovery strategy for use in target identification phase.

Tyrosinase (EC 1.14.18.1), also known as polyphenols oxidase, is a glycosylated multi-copper monooxygenase enzyme widely distributed in many different organisms. The enzyme is responsible for the pigmentation of skin, eyes and hair in mammals and in fruits and vegetables undesired browning. These issues have encouraged researchers all over the world to seek new, potent and safe inhibitors of the enzyme for use in foods and cosmetics. A large number of compounds from natural products have been reported as moderate to potent inhibitors of tyrosinase. Among them, many flavonoid derivatives have been revealed to be the strong inhibitors of tyrosinase. In this review, we reviewed many examples of tyrosinase inhibitors with flavonoid structure reported between 2008-2013. Our findings underline that flavonoids should continue to be the focus of tyrosinase inhibition studies as the promising compounds.

The tyrosinase enzyme (EC 1.14.18.1) is an oxidoreductase inside the general enzyme classification and is involved in the oxidation and reduction process in the epidermis. These chemical reactions that the enzyme catalyzes are of principal importance in the melanogenesis process. This process of melanogenesis is related to the melanin formation, a heteropolymer of indolic nature that provides the different tonalities in the skin and helps to the protection from the ultraviolet radiation. However, a pigment overproduction, come up by the action of the tyrosinase, can cause different disorders in the skin related to the hyperpigmentation. Several studies mainly focused on the characteristics of the enzyme have been reported. In this work, an approximation to general aspects related to this enzyme is made. Besides, it is treated the researches that have been published in the part of the biochemical anatomy dealing with diseases associated with this protein (melanogenesis), its active place and its physiological states, the molecular mechanism, the methods carried out to detect the inhibitory activity, and the used substrates.