Design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of highly potent small molecule-peptide conjugates as new HIV-1 fusion inhibitors.

Basic Information

ID: ALA2321797

Journal: J Med Chem

Title: Design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of highly potent small molecule-peptide conjugates as new HIV-1 fusion inhibitors.

Authors: Wang C, Shi W, Cai L, Lu L, Wang Q, Zhang T, Li J, Zhang Z, Wang K, Xu L, Jiang X, Jiang S, Liu K.

Abstract: The small molecule fusion inhibitors N-(4-carboxy-3-hydroxyphenyl)-2,5-dimethylpyrrole (NB-2) and N-(3-carboxy-4-hydroxyphenyl)-2,5-dimethylpyrrole (A12) target a hydrophobic pocket of HIV-1 gp41 and have moderate anti-HIV-1 activity. In this paper, we report the design, synthesis, and structure-activity relationship of a group of hybrid molecules in which the pocket-binding domain segment of the C34 peptide was replaced with NB-2 and A12 derivatives. In addition, the synergistic effect between the small molecule and peptide moieties was analyzed, and lead compounds with a novel scaffold were discovered. We found that either the nonpeptide or peptide part alone showed weak activity against HIV-1-mediated cell-cell fusion, but the conjugates properly generated a strong synergistic effect. Among them, conjugates Aoc-βAla-P26 and Noc-βAla-P26 exhibited a low nanomolar IC50 in the cell-cell fusion assay and effectively inhibited T20-sensitive and -resistant HIV-1 strains. Furthermore, the new molecules exhibited better stability against proteinase K digestion than T20 and C34.

CiteXplore: 23458727

DOI: 10.1021/jm3018964

Patent ID: