Discovery and optimization of aspartate aminotransferase 1 inhibitors to target redox balance in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma
作者:Justin Anglin、Reza Beheshti Zavareh、Philipp N. Sander、Daniel Haldar、Edouard Mullarky、Lewis C. Cantley、Alec C. Kimmelman、Costas A. Lyssiotis、Luke L. Lairson
DOI:10.1016/j.bmcl.2018.04.061
日期:2018.9
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a lethal malignancy that is extremely refractory to the therapeutic approaches that have been evaluated to date. Recently, it has been demonstrated that PDAC tumors are dependent upon a metabolic pathway involving aspartate aminotransferase 1, also known as glutamate-oxaloacetate transaminase 1 (GOT1), for the maintenance of redox homeostasis and sustained proliferation. As such, small molecule inhibitors targeting this metabolic pathway may provide a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of this devastating disease. To this end, from a high throughput screen of similar to 800,000 molecules, 4-(1H-indol-4-yl)-N-phenylpiperazine-1-carboxamide was identified as an inhibitor of GOT1. Mouse pharmacokinetic studies revealed that potency, rather than inherent metabolic instability, would limit immediate cell- and rodent xenograft-based experiments aimed at validating this potential cancer metabolism-related target. Medicinal chemistry-based optimization resulted in the identification of multiple derivatives with >10-fold improvements in potency, as well as the identification of a tryptamine-based series of GOT1 inhibitors. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.