Discoidin domain receptor 1 (DDR1) is an emerging potential molecular target for new anticancer drug discovery. We have discovered a series of 3-(2-(pyrazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidin-6-yl) ethynyl)benzamides that are selective and orally bioavailable DDR1 inhibitors. The two most promising compounds (7rh and 7rj) inhibited the enzymatic activity of DDR1, with IC50 values of 6.8 and 7.0 nM, respectively, but were significantly less potent in suppressing the kinase activities of DDR2, Bcr-Abl, and c-Kit. Further study revealed that 7rh bound with DDR1 with a Kd value of 0.6 nM, while it was significantly less potent to the other 455 kinases tested. The S(35) and S(10) selectivity scores of 7rh were 0.035 and 0.008, respectively. The compounds also potently inhibited the proliferation of cancer cells expressing high levels of DDR1 and strongly suppressed cancer cell invasion, adhesion, and tumorigenicity. Preliminary pharmacokinetic studies suggested that they possessed good PK profiles, with oral bioavailabilities of 67.4% and 56.2%, respectively.

A general synthesis of 1-aryl-1-H-indazoles from o-halogenated aryl aldehydes or ketones and aryl hydrazines was described. This protocol included an intermolecular condensation and a ligand-free copper-catalyzed intramolecular Ullmann-type coupling reaction. This method was applied to a wide range of substrates to produce the indazole products in good yields.

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The use of small molecular modulators to target the guanine nucleotide exchange factor SOS1 has been demonstrated to be a promising strategy for the treatment of various KRAS-driven cancers. In the present study, we designed and synthesized a series of new SOS1 inhibitors with the pyrido[2,3-d]pyrimidin-7one scaffold. One representative compound 8u showed comparable activities to the reported SOS1 inhibitor BI-3406 in both the biochemical assay and the 3-D cell growth inhibition assay. Compound 8u obtained good cellular activities against a panel of KRAS G12-mutated cancer cell lines and inhibited downstream ERK and AKT activation in MIA PaCa-2 and AsPC-1 cells. In addition, it displayed synergistic antiproliferative effects when used in combination with KRAS G12C or G12D inhibitors. Further modifications of the new compounds may give us a promising SOS1 inhibitor with favorable druglike properties for use in the treatment of KRAS-mutated patients.

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Advances in Magnetic Resonance Imaging hardware and methodologies allow for promoting the cortical morphometry with submillimeter spatial resolution. In this paper, we generated 3D self-enhanced high-resolution (HR) MRI imaging, by adapting 1 deep learning architecture, and 3 standard pipelines, FreeSurfer, MaCRUISE, and BrainSuite, have been collectively employed to evaluate the cortical thickness. We systematically investigated the differences in cortical thickness estimation for MRI sequences at multiresolution homologously originated from the native image. It has been revealed that there systematically exhibited the preferences in determining both inner and outer cortical surfaces at higher resolution, yielding most deeper cortical surface placements toward GM/WM or GM/CSF boundaries, which directs a consistent reduction tendency of mean cortical thickness estimation; on the contrary, the lower resolution data will most probably provide a more coarse and rough evaluation in cortical surface reconstruction, resulting in a relatively thicker estimation. Although the differences of cortical thickness estimation at the diverse spatial resolution varied with one another, almost all led to roughly one-sixth to one-fifth significant reduction across the entire brain at the HR, independent to the pipelines we applied, which emphasizes on generally coherent improved accuracy in a data-independent manner and endeavors to cost-efficiency with quantitative opportunities.