Benzopyrone represents a privilege scaffold to identify novel adenosine A1/A2A receptor antagonists

Abstract

Adenosine receptor antagonists are under investigation as potential drug candidates for the treatment of certain cancers, neurological disorders, depression and potentially improve tumour immunotherapy. The benzo-γ-pyrone scaffold is well-known in medicinal chemistry with diverse pharmacological activities attributed to them, however, their therapeutic potential as adenosine receptor antagonists have not been investigated in detail. To expand on the structure–activity relationships, the present study explored the adenosine A1 and A2A receptor binding affinities of a selected series of benzo-γ-pyrone analogues. In vitro evaluation led to the identification of 5-hydroxy-2-(3-hydroxyphenyl)-4H-1-benzopyran-4-one with the best adenosine A2A receptor affinity among the test compounds and was found to be non-selective (A1Ki = 0.956 µM; A2AKi = 1.44 µM). Hydroxy substitution on ring A and/or B play a key role in modulating the binding affinity at adenosine A1 and A2A receptors. Adenosine A1 receptor affinity was increased to the nanomolar range with hydroxy substitution on C6 (ring A), while meta-hydroxy substitution on ring B governed adenosine A2A receptor affinity. The double bond between C2 and C3 of ring C as well as C2 phenyl substitution was shown to be imperative for both adenosine A1 and A2A receptor affinity. Selected benzo-γ-pyrone derivatives behaved as adenosine A1 receptor antagonists in the performed GTP shift assays. It may be concluded that benzo-γ-pyrone based derivatives are suitable leads for designing and identifying adenosine receptor antagonists as treatment of various disorders