Synthesis and Biological Activities of Sulfinyl Acetamide Derivatives for Narcolepsy Treatment

In order to develop new narcolepsy treatment agents, a series of modafinil derivatives were designed and synthesized. In this paper the tricycle structure with sulfinyl acetamide moiety was adopted as alternate scaffold. Fifteen novel modafinil derivatives were developed by a parallel synthesis approach and evaluated for their central nervous system stimulant effects. Preliminary tests showed that some of the target compounds manifested strong central nervous system stimulant activity, especially 6k proved to be the most promising compound.