“…(2) shows the structures of examples of known potent inhibitors, together with the structure of the consensus pharmacophore containing the benzamide with the amide N-H held cis to the amide carbonyl either by incorporation into a covalent fivemembered ring (in isoindolones), covalent six-membered rings (isoquinolin-1-ones [26,46,[48][49][50][51][52]95,96], 3,4-dihydroisoquinolin-1-ones [26,97], quinazolin-4-ones [24,48,[97][98][99][100], thienoisoquinolinones [48], phthalazin-1-ones [95,97], phthalazine-1,4-diones [95], phenanthridin-6-ones [94,95], naphthalimides [95]) and covalent sevenmembered rings (benzazepin-1-ones [48] and the highly potent tricyclic inhibitors recently reported by the Newcastle group [20,21] and the Guilford group [49]). Ingeniously, intramolecular hydrogen bonds have also been used by this group to maintain the required planar benzamide conformation in their potent benzoxazole-4-carboxamides [97] and benzimidazole-4-carboxamides [22] and by a Japanese group in the new lead inhibitor FR261529, a quinoxaline-5-carboxamide [24,101]. Cantoni et al had claimed the benzene ring was essential in the pharmacophore and could not be replaced by thiophene [102] but this orthodoxy has been challenged by the observation of potent inhibitory activity for series of aminothiophenecarboxamides, thieno [3,4-c]pyridin-4(5H)-ones, thieno [3,4-d]pyrimidin-4(3H)-ones [103] and thieno [2...…”