No abstract

In Table 1, the word "Trihexyphenidyl" is misspelled and the structures given for L-dopa and Piribedil are incorrect. The correct structures for these compounds are shown below.

To date, the pharmacotherapy of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has relied on acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors (AChEIs) and, more recently, an N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist. AD is a multifactorial syndrome with several target proteins contributing to its etiology. "Multi-target-directed ligands" (MTDLs) have great potential for treating complex diseases such as AD because they can interact with multiple targets. The design of compounds that can hit more than one specific AD target thus represents an innovative strategy for AD treatment. Tacrine was the first AChEI introduced in therapy. Recent studies have demonstrated its ability to interact with different AD targets. Furthermore, numerous tacrine homo- and heterodimers have been developed with the aim of improving and enlarging its biological profile beyond its ability to act as an AChEI. Several tacrine hybrid derivatives have been designed and synthesized with the same goal. This review will focus on and summarize the last two years of research into the development of tacrine derivatives able to hit AD targets beyond simple AChE inhibition.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a multifactorial syndrome with several target proteins contributing to its etiology. To confront AD, an innovative strategy is to design single chemical entities able to simultaneously modulate more than one target. Here, we present compounds that inhibit acetylcholinesterase and NMDA receptor activity. Furthermore, these compounds inhibit AChE-induced Abeta aggregation and display antioxidant properties, emerging as lead candidates for treating AD.

One of the characteristics of Alzheimer's disease (AD) that hinders the discovery of effective disease-modifying therapies is the multifactorial nature of its etiopathology. To circumvent this drawback, the use of multi-target-directed ligands (MTDLs) has recently been proposed as a means of simultaneously hitting several targets involved in the development of the AD syndrome. In this paper, a new class of MTDLs based on a polyamine-quinone skeleton, whose lead (memoquin, 2) showed promising properties in preclinical investigations (Cavalli et al. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2007, 46, 3689-3692), is described. 3-29 were tested in vitro against a number of isolated AD-related targets, namely, AChE and BChE, and Abeta aggregation (both AChE-mediated and self-induced). Furthermore, the ability of the compounds to counteract the oxidative stress in a human neuronal-like cellular system (SH-SY5Y cells) was assayed, in both the presence and absence of NQO1, an enzyme able to generate and maintain the reduced form of quinone.

No abstract

The multifunctional nature of Alzheimer's disease (AD) provides the logical foundation for the development of an innovative drug design strategy centered on multi-target-directed-ligands (MTDLs). In recent years, the MTDL concept has been exploited to design different ligands hitting different biological targets. Our first rationally designed MTDL was the polyamine caproctamine (1), which provided a synergistic cholinergic action against AD by antagonizing muscarinic M(2) autoreceptors and inhibiting acetylcholinesterase (AChE). Lipocrine (7) represented the next step in our research. Due to its ability to inhibit AChE catalytic and non-catalytic functions together with oxidative stress, 7 emerged as an interesting pharmacological tool for investigating the neurodegenerative mechanism underlying AD. Memoquin (9) is a quinone-bearing polyamine endowed with a unique multifunctional profile. With its development, we arrived at the proof of concept of the MTDL drug discovery approach. Experiments in vitro and in vivo confirmed its multimodal mechanisms of action and its interaction with different end-points of the neurotoxic cascade leading to AD. More recently, the MTDL approach led to carbacrine (12). In addition to the multiple activities displayed by 7, 12 displayed an interesting modulation of NMDA receptor activity. The pivotal role played by this target in AD pathogenesis suggests that 12 may be a promising new chemical entity in the MTDL gold rush.

The universal template approach to drug design foresees that a polyamine can be modified in such a way to recognize any neurotransmitter receptor. Thus, hybrids of polymethylene tetraamines and philanthotoxins, exemplified by methoctramine (1) and PhTX-343 (2), respectively, were synthesized to produce novel inhibitors of muscular nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Polyamines 3-25 were synthesized and their biological profiles were evaluated at frog rectus abdominis muscle nicotinic receptors and guinea pig left atria (M(2)) and ileum longitudinal muscle (M(3)) muscarinic acetylcholine receptors. All of the compounds, like prototypes 1 and 2, were noncompetitive antagonists of nicotinic receptors while being, like 1, competitive antagonists at muscarinic M(2) and M(3) receptor subtypes. Interestingly, polyamines bearing a low number of methylenes between the nitrogen atoms, as in 3, 6, and 7, displayed a biological profile similar to that of 2: a noncompetitive antagonism at nicotinic receptors in the 7-25 microM range while not showing any antagonism for muscarinic receptors up to 10 microM. Increasing the number of methylenes separating these nitrogen atoms in methoctramine-related tetraamines resulted in a significant improvement in potency at nicotinic receptors. The most potent tetraamine was 19, bearing a 12 methylene spacer between the nitrogen atoms, which was 12-fold and 250-fold more potent than prototypes 1 and 2, respectively. Tetraamines 9-11, bearing a rather rigid spacer between the nitrogen atoms instead of the very flexible polymethylene chain, displayed a profile similar to that of 1 at nicotinic receptors, whereas a significant decrease in potency was observed at muscarinic M(2) receptors. This finding may have relevance in understanding the mode of interaction with these receptors. Similarly, the constrained analogue 12 of methoctramine showed a decrease in potency at nicotinic and muscarinic M(2) receptors, revealing that the tricyclic system, which incorporates the 2-methoxybenzylamine moiety of 1, does not represent a good pharmacophore for activity at these sites. A most intriguing finding was the observation that the photolabile tetraamine 22 was more potent than methoctramine at nicotinic receptors and, what is more important, it inhibited a closed state of the receptor.