Rhenium(I) tricarbonyl compounds of bioactive thiosemicarbazones: Synthesis, characterization and activity against Trypanosoma cruzi.

American Trypanosomiasis is a chronic infection discovered and described in 1909 by the Brazilian scientist Carlos Chagas. It is caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. Although it affects about 10million people in Latin America, the current chemotherapy is still inadequate. The discovery of new drugs is urgently needed. Our group is focused on the development of prospective metal-based drugs mainly based on bioactive ligands and pharmacologically interesting metal ions. In this work three new rhenium(I) tricarbonyl compounds fac-[ReI(CO)3Br(HL)] where HL=5-nitrofuryl containing thiosemicarbazones were synthesized and fully characterized in solution and in the solid state. The in vitro evaluation of the compounds on T. cruzi trypomastigotes (Dm28c strain) showed that the Re(I) compounds are 8 to 15 times more active than the reference drug Nifurtimox and show a 4 to 17 fold increase in activity in respect to the free (HL) ligands. Obtained compounds also show good selectivity indexes (IC50 endothelial cells Ea.hy926/IC50 T. cruzi (Dm28c tripomastigotes)). 1H NMR and MS studies, performed with time, showed that the fac-[Re(CO)3Br(HL)] species convert into the dimers [Re2(CO)6(L)2] in solution. Crystal structure of [ReI2(CO)6(L2)2], the product of complexes' dimerization, was solved. Related to the mechanism of action, the studied compounds do not generate radical oxygen species in the parasite (as 5-nitrofuryl derived thiosemicarbazones do) probably due to the unfavorable nitro reduction potential of the generated dimeric species. On the contrary, the compounds produce a decrease of the oxygen consumption rate of the parasites, maybe inhibiting their mitochondrial respiration.

Two- and three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationships studies on a series of liver x receptor ligands.

Liver X receptor (LXR) is an attractive drug target for the development of novel therapeutic agents for the treatment of dyslipidaemia and cholestasis. In the present work, comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) and hologram quantitative structure-activity relationship (HQSAR) studies were conducted on a series of potent LXR ligands. Significant correlation coefficients (CoMFA, r(2) = 0.98 and q(2) = 0.69; HQSAR, r(2) = 0.99 and q(2) = 0.85) were obtained, indicating the potential of the models for untested compounds. The models were then used to predict the potency of an external test set, and the predicted values obtained from the 2D and 3D models were in good agreement with the experimental results. The final QSAR models, along with the information obtained from 3D steric and electrostatic contour maps and 2D contribution maps should be useful for the design of novel LXR ligands having improved potency.