Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is a lethal childhood brainstem tumour, with a quarter of patients harbouring somatic mutations in ACVR1 , encoding the serine/threonine kinase ALK2. Despite being an amenable drug target, little has been done to-date to systematically evaluate the role of ACVR1 in DIPG, nor to screen currently available inhibitors in patient-derived tumour models. Here we show the dependence of DIPG cells on the mutant receptor, and the preclinical efficacy of two distinct chemotypes of ALK2 inhibitor in vitro and in vivo. We demonstrate the pyrazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidine LDN-193189 and the pyridine LDN-214117 to be orally bioavailable and well-tolerated, with good brain penetration. Treatment of immunodeprived mice bearing orthotopic xenografts of H3.3K27M, ACVR1 R206H mutant HSJD-DIPG-007 cells with 25 mg/kg LDN-193189 or LDN-214117 for 28 days extended survival compared with vehicle controls. Development of ALK2 inhibitors with improved potency, selectivity and advantageous pharmacokinetic properties may play an important role in therapy for DIPG patients.

The scaffold of fenestranes is quite unique, as it contains four condensed cycles and a distorted tetracoordinated central carbon atom with bond angles greater than the regular 109°28". In this Minireview, a detailed overview on the developments regarding this compound class, including their synthesis, is given for the time period since 2006. In the past years, natural products that belong to the class of heterofenestranes have been isolated and their syntheses will also be discussed.

Due to the widespread prevalence of resistant parasites, chloroquine (CQ) was removed from front-line antimalarial chemotherapy in the 1990s despite its initial promise of disease eradication. Since then, resistance-conferring mutations have been identified in transporters such as the PfCRT, that allow for the efflux of CQ from its primary site of action, the parasite digestive vacuole. Chemosensitizing/chemoreversing compounds interfere with the function of these transporters thereby sensitizing parasites to CQ once again. However, compounds identified thus far have disappointing in vivo efficacy and screening for alternative candidates is required to revive this strategy. In this study, we propose a simple and direct means to rapidly screen for such compounds using a fluorescent-tagged CQ molecule. When this screen was applied to a small library, seven novel chemosensitizers (octoclothepin, methiothepin, metergoline, loperamide, chlorprothixene, L-703,606 and mibefradil) were quickly elucidated, including two which showed greater potency than the classical chemosensitizers verapamil and desipramine.

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Herein we describe new accesses to dienynes and trienynes using new cascade reactions: 4-exo-dig cyclocarbopalladation followed by a Suzuki-Miyaura or Sonogashira cross-coupling.

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Das Gerüst von Fenestranen ist einzigartig, da es vier kondensierte Ringe und ein verzerrtes vierfach koordiniertes zentrales Kohlenstoffatom aufweist, dessen Bindungswinkel größer als die regulären 109°28′′ sind. In diesem Kurzaufsatz wird eine detaillierte Übersicht über die Entwicklungen bezüglich dieser Verbindungsklasse, einschließlich ihrer Synthese, für den Zeitraum seit 2006 gegeben. In den vergangenen Jahren wurden Naturstoffe, die als Heterofenestrane klassifiziert werden können, isoliert, und deren Synthesen werden ebenfalls diskutiert.