Mini Reviews in Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 21, Issue 11, 2021

Coumarin, sulphonamide, and amide scaffolds exhibit diverse pharmacological features and constitute an important class of therapeutic agents. In this review, we have discussed the synthesis, biological properties, and SAR of coumarins containing sulphonamide or amide group in the last seven years. Many reviews on the therapeutic activities of coumarins, sulphonamides, and amides have been published. Hence the authors focused on coumarin-linked sulphonamide or amide scaffolds. The review provides information on the synthetic route to new coumarins containing sulphonamide or amide groups with improved pharmacological properties.

Recent studies have proven that the purinergic signaling pathway plays a key role in neurotransmission and neuromodulation, and is involved in various neurodegenerative diseases and psychiatric disorders. With the characterization of the subtypes of receptors in purinergic signaling, i.e. the P1 (adenosine), P2X (ion channel) and P2Y (G protein-coupled), more attention has been paid to the pathophysiology and therapeutic potential of purinergic signaling in the central nervous system disorders. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive and deadly neurodegenerative disease that is characterized by memory loss, cognitive impairment and dementia. However, as drug development aimed to prevent or control AD has series of failures in recent years, more researchers have focused on the neuroprotection-related mechanisms such as purinergic signaling in AD patients to find a potential cure. This article reviews the recent discoveries of purinergic signaling in AD, and summarizes the potential agents as modulators for the receptors of purinergic signaling in AD-related research and treatments. Thus, our paper provides an insight into purinergic signaling in the development of anti- AD therapies.

As a group of heterocyclic macrocycle organic natural compounds occurring universally in animal tissues and plants, porphyrins are composed of four modified pyrrole subunits. Porphyrin analogues/ derivatives possess multiple biochemical properties because of their unique structures and have been extensively investigated in cancer treatment. Studies have shown that porphyrins and their derivatives have the ability to locate tumor cells in a variety of human cancers, and these compounds not only exhibit potent therapeutic effects as photodynamic agents but also show promising properties in medicinal imaging, such as MRI, photoacoustic imaging, fluorescence imaging, and PET/SPECT imaging. This paper reviews the recent reports of porphyrin derivatives as therapeutic agents used in tumor therapies, such as sonodynamic therapy, photodynamic therapy and radiotherapy, as well as the imaging agents for multimodality tumor imaging. The limitations of porphyrin-based compounds in tumor treatments and future prospects are also summarized.

EGFR-TKIs are confronted with big challenge of everlasting activated EGFR mutations which lack effective binding sites; this barrier is the dark side that largely limits the outcome of NSCLC patients in the clinic. Combination strategies show impressive anti-tumor efficacy that compared with EGFR-TKI mono-treatment, especially targeting both stem cells and non-stem cells. SHP2 (Src homology 2-containing phosphotyrosine phosphatase 2) plays an important role in regulating various malignant biology through hyper-activating intracellular pathways due to either overexpression or catalytical mutation. Some pathways, in which SHP2 was involved, were overlapped with EGFR downstream, and others were not subject to EGFR. Interestingly, SHP2 suppression was reported to destroy the stemness of cancer. Therefore, we hypothesize that SHP2 inhibitor might be a promising drug that could synergistically enhance or sensitize the anti-tumor efficacy of EGFR-TKIs in EGFR mutated NSCLC patients. Here, we summarized the mechanisms of SHP2 in regulating EGFR mutated NSCLC patients, and attempted to reveal the potential synergistic file://localhost/C/:Program%20Files%20(x86):Youdao:Dict:7.5.2.0:resultui:dict:%3Fkeyword=effects of SHP2 inhibitor combined with EGFR-TKIs.

The field of nuclear medicine is rapidly evolving due to the high demand of radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. The availability of a vast array of radioisotopes, improvement in radiolabeling strategies, and advancements in detection systems have also contributed to the progress in this field. Radiopharmaceuticals are mainly classified based on their application as diagnostic or therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals. These are available either as ready to use preparations or prepared at hospital radiopharmacy either using automated synthesis modules or by using freezedried cold kit formulations. Availability of freeze-dried cold kits for preparation of varied radiopharmaceuticals for targeting various organs and tumors played an essential role in the extensive use of ^99mTc radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostic imaging by single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging. Cold kits are especially suitable for the preparation of radiopharmaceuticals labeled with isotopes like ¹⁷⁷Lu with relatively long half-life or radionuclides produced by radioisotope generators. A simplified procedure for the preparation of positron emission tomography (PET) radiopharmaceuticals is also desired to achieve images with higher resolution and sensitivity offered by PET. Robust kit formulations will simplify the preparation of PET radiopharmaceuticals and will contribute to extensive applications of positron emitters such as ⁶⁸Ga. Several therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals are also being made using cold kits of the ligands. This review provides an update on diagnostic and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals prepared using cold kits.

Herein, the underlying role of disruptor of telomeric silencing 1-like (DOT1L) as a therapeutic target for mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL)-rearranged is comprehensively clarified. DOT1L can be aberrantly recruited by an MLL fusion partner, thereby causing the over-expression, of several leukemia relevant genes and eventually leading to leukemia. As the unique histone methyltransferase (HMT), DOT1L possesses the function to specifically methylate H3K79, which was identified as a hallmark of active transcription. Accordingly, blockading of DOT1L has been recognized as an effective approach for cancer treatment. Currently, nucleoside DOT1L inhibitors have been developed successfully with the only EPZ5676 entering phase I clinical trial in 2013, which was validated as ‘orphan drug’ toward MLL-rearranged leukemia by FDA. In order to find compounds with better pharmacokinetic properties as DOT1L inhibitors, other types of non-nucleoside skeletons have also been reported successively.

Background: Nanoparticles (NPs) are a group of particles with at least one dimension ranging from 1 nm to 100 nm in diameter and a surrounding interfacial layer. The NP-protein interactions include covalent and non-covalent bonds. Several dehydrogenase enzymes (e.g., alcohol dehydrogenase, lactate dehydrogenase, alanine dehydrogenase, glutamate dehydrogenase, leucine dehydrogenase, phenylalanine dehydrogenase, and malate dehydrogenase) are used for immobilization by NPs. Also, magnetic NPs and quantum dots are promising model systems for the design of bioanalytical sensors and biological enzyme assemblies. In this overview, we aimed to improve the current knowledge of interactions between dehydrogenase enzymes and NPs and to introduce dehydrogenases with industrial and medical applications. Also, bioconjugation of NPs with dehydrogenase enzymes has broad applications in biocatalysis and nanomedicine in the field of drug discovery. However, studies on the characterization of NP-enzyme complexes show that the anatomy and activity of enzymes are dependent on the chemistry of NP ligands, NP size, and labeling methods. Moreover, the NPprotein conjugates show increased/decreased enzymatic activities, depending on the NP features. Conclusion: In this study, we reviewed the findings related to NP-enzyme interactions for nanotechnology applications and conjugation techniques. We also highlighted several challenges associated with the NP-enzyme interactions, including the stability and reusability of enzymes in NP-enzyme formation.

Benzimidazole is an aromatic bicyclic heterocycle that is regarded as a valuable privileged scaffold in medicinal chemistry. Many marketed drugs and natural products containing benzimidazole scaffolds exert great influence in fighting various diseases, such as hypertension, peptic ulcers, parasitic infections, and cancer. In this review, we introduce the pharmacological applications of some marketed drugs and lead compounds with a focus on anticancer agents, reporting the corresponding data to show the biological activities at their targets. The publications in this review encompass those from 2014 to 2019.

Background: The development of drug resistance by bacterial strains is a public health issue, being the main cause of the decrease in the effectiveness of numerous antibiotics. In this context, it is essential to find new drugs with better antibacterial activity. Objective: The authors proposed to cover relevant literature, published following the review article written by Rani et al., illustrating chemical structures and antibacterial activity of some imidazole derivatives. Method: Approximately 100 scientific articles presenting more than 150 compounds have been reviewed. The most relevant data have been extracted and systematically arranged in figures and tables. Results: The reviewed studies used a broad number of bacterial strains, however Staphylococcus aureus as Gram-positive, and Escherichia coli as Gram-negative bacterial strains were most frequently used to assess the activity of these compounds. Conclusion: Some of the compounds showed promising results against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains, thus further analysis should be performed in terms of toxicity, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Additional screening of these imidazole derivatives could lead to useful compounds with potential broad-spectrum antibacterial activity against resistant pathogens.