R. Ortega et al. / Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. 19 (2009) 1773–1778
1777
In the compounds bearing a methoxyphenylpiperazine, the po-
sition of the methoxy group in the aromatic group critically influ-
ences the selectivity and affinity for dopamine receptors. For
example, on the D2 receptor, the pKi values of the 2-methoxyphe-
nylpiperazines 11a and 12a were 7.91 and 8.44, respectively, while
its position isomers, the 4-methoxyphenylpiperazines 11b and
12b, showed no affinity for this receptor. The same can be said
for the isomers 6a (pKi = 6.10) and 6b (pKi < 4), which carry a pro-
pyl bridge. Displacement of the methoxy group in the aromatic
ring from position 2 to 4 produced, in all cases, a decrease in the
affinity for the three receptors, though selectivity of the D3 recep-
tors increased significantly. This indicates that the change of the
location of the methoxy group is far more detrimental for D1 and
D2 than for D3 receptor binding.29 Thus, the compound that was
most selective for D3 was 12b, as it had an affinity for this receptor
more than 1000-fold higher than it had for D1 or D2. The location of
the methoxy in position 3 leads to a compound (11h) with D2 and
D3 affinities that are intermediate between those of its position 2
(11a) and position 4 (11b) isomers.
Considering that serotonin antagonism at 5-HT2A receptors has
been reported to improve the negative symptoms of schizophrenia
and to reduce the occurrence of extrapyramidal side effects30 and
bearing in mind that a preferential blockade of D3 versus D2 recep-
tors is associated with a relatively benign effect upon motor func-
tion as compared with drugs possessing D2/D3 or principally D2
antagonist properties,5,31 compounds 11a, 11g, 12a and 12f32 were
selected among the new compounds. This is because (a) their Ki
values <50 nM (or pKi > 7.30) at both D2 and D3 receptors, and
(b) they have a higher affinity to D3 than to D2 receptors (2.2- to
5.2-fold). These chosen compounds were examined further for
binding affinity toward 5-HT2A receptors by competing against
[3H]ketanserin (Table 2).
tivity over the D1 receptor. Moreover, 12b displayed a D3 affinity in
the nanomolar range and a high selectivity over D1 and D2. The SAR
study on these compounds revealed that both the length of the
bridge between the benzolactam and the piperazine and the size
of the lactam ring decisively influenced their D2 and D3 affinities.
Selected compounds showed moderate 5-HT2A binding affinity,
which could help to reduce the occurrence of extrapyramidal side
effects should the compounds be used as antipsychotics. These
data significantly improve our understanding of the D3 pharmaco-
phore and are expected to lead to novel approaches for the treat-
ment of schizophrenia. Further optimization of this series will be
reported in due course.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by grants from the CICYT
(Spain, SAF2005-08025-C03) and by the Xunta de Galicia (Spain,
PIDIT06PXIB203173PR), as well as by the HERACLES and COMBIO-
MED networks from Instituto de Salud Carlos III. J. Brea received
financial support from the Programa Isabel Barreto (Xunta de Gali-
cia, Spain).
Supplementary data
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in
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Table 2
Human D2, D3 and 5-HT2A receptor binding affinities (pKi) of compounds 11a, 11g,
12g, and 12fa
Compound
D2
D3
D2/D3 Ki ratio
5-HT2A
11a
11g
12a
12f
7.91 0.30
7.45 0.10
8.44 0.17
7.44 0.07
8.58 0.16
8.17 0.16
8.80 0.35
7.84 0.17
4.7
5.2
2.2
2.5
6.32 0.07
7.02 0.05
6.75 0.27
7.98 0.06
a
All values are means of two or three separate competition experiments.
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