Novel nonquaternary reactivators showing reactivation efficiency for soman-inhibited human acetylcholinesterase

Article abstract of DOI:10.1016/j.toxlet.2016.01.015

Soman is a highly toxic nerve agent with strong inhibition of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), but of the few reactivators showing antidotal efficiency for soman-inhibited AChE presently are all permanently charged cationic oximes with poor penetration of the blood-brain barrier. To overcome this problem, uncharged reactivators have been designed and synthesized, but few of them were efficient for treating soman poisoning. Herein, we used a dual site biding strategy to develop more efficient uncharged reactivators. The ortho-hydroxylbenzaldoximes were chosen as reactivation ligands of AChE to prevent the secondary poisoning of AChE, and simple aromatic groups were used as peripheral site ligands of AChE, which were linked to the oximes in a similar way as that found in the reactivator HI-6. The in vitro experiment demonstrated that some of the resulting conjugates have robust activity against soman-inhibited AChE, and oxime 8b was highlighted as the most efficient one. Although not good as HI-6 in vitro, these new compounds hold promise for development of more efficient centrally acting reactivators for soman poisoning due to their novel nonquaternary structures, which are predicted to be able to cross the blood-brain barrier.

Full text of DOI:10.1016/j.toxlet.2016.01.015

Accepted Manuscript
Title: Novel nonquaternary reactivators showing reactivation
efficiency for soman-inhibited human acetylcholinesterase
Author: Zhao Wei Yan-qin Liu Yong-an Wang Wan-hua Li
Xin-bo Zhou Jian Zhao Chun-qian Huang Xing-zhou Li Jia
Liu Zhi-bing Zheng Song Li
PII:
S0378-4274(16)30014-5
DOI:
Reference:
http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.toxlet.2016.01.015
TOXLET 9310
To appear in:
Toxicology Letters
Received date:
Revised date:
Accepted date:
28-4-2015
18-1-2016
20-1-2016
Please cite this article as: Wei, Zhao, Liu, Yan-qin, Wang, Yong-an, Li, Wan-
hua, Zhou, Xin-bo, Zhao, Jian, Huang, Chun-qian, Li, Xing-zhou, Liu, Jia,
Zheng, Zhi-bing, Li, Song, Novel nonquaternary reactivators showing reactivation
efficiency for soman-inhibited human acetylcholinesterase.Toxicology Letters
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.toxlet.2016.01.015
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Novel nonquaternary reactivators showing reactivation
efficiency for soman-inhibited human acetylcholinesterase
a,#
b,#
b
b
a
b
Zhao Wei, Yan-qin Liu, Yong-an Wang, Wan-hua Li, Xin-bo Zhou, Jian Zhao,
b
a
c
*a
*ad
Chun-qian Huang, Xing-zhou Li, Jia Liu, Zhi-bing Zheng and Song Li
a
Laboratory of Computer-Aided Drug Design & Discovery, Beijing Institute of
Pharmacology and Toxicology, Beijing 100850, China
E-mail: zzbcaptain@aliyun.com, weizhaobruce@163.com Tel: +86 010 66 931
642
b
Department of Military Toxicology and Biochemical Pharmacology, Institute of
Pharmacology and Toxicology, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing
100850, China
c
Department of Blood Transfusion, The 307th Hospital of Chinese People’s
Liberation Army, Beijing 100071, China
d
State Key Laboratory of Toxicology and Medical Countermeasures, Beijing Institute
of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Beijing 100850, China
#
These authors contributed equally to this work.
1

Highlights:



We designed and synthesized a series of new nonquaternary oximes aiming
for reactivation of OP-poisoned hAChE.
Some of these new oximes showed obvious in vitro reactivation potency of
soman-inhibited hAChE.
Greater affinity of oximes 7b-9b to hAChE might partially account for their
higher reactivation efficiency for soman-inhibited hAChE.
ABSTRACT: Soman is a highly toxic nerve agent with strong inhibition of
acetylcholinesterase (AChE), but of the few reactivators showing antidotal
efficiency for soman-inhibited AChE presently are all permanently charged
cationic oximes with poor penetration of the blood-brain barrier. To overcome
this problem, uncharged reactivators have been designed and synthesized, but
few of them were efficient for treating soman poisoning. Herein, we used a dual
site biding strategy to develop more efficient uncharged reactivators. The
ortho-hydroxylbenzaldoximes were chosen as reactivation ligands of AChE to
prevent the secondary poisoning of AChE, and simple aromatic groups were
used as peripheral site ligands of AChE, which were linked to the oximes in a
similar way as that found in the reactivator HI-6. The in vitro experiment
demonstrated that some of the resulting conjugates have robust activity against
soman-inhibited AChE, and oxime 8b was highlighted as the most efficient one.
Although not good as HI-6 in vitro, these new compounds hold promise for
development of more efficient centrally acting reactivators for soman poisoning
due to their novel nonquaternary structures, which are predicted to be able to
cross the blood-brain barrier.
Abbreviations: AChE, Acetylcholinesterase; ACh, Acetylcholine; A-site, Active site;
P-site, Peripheral site; PSL, Peripheral site ligand; CNS, Central nervous system;
BBB, Blood-brain barrier; TLC, Thin-layer chromatography; BSA, Bovine serum
albumin; ATCh, acetylthiocholine; DTNB, 5, 5’-dithiodis-2-nitrobenzoic acid.
Keywords: Soman, Acetylcholinesterase, Nonquaternary reactivators, Peripheral site
ligand, Dual-site binding, Reactivation
2

1
. Introduction
Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is a hydrolase, it terminates the action of the
neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) at postsynaptic membranes and neuromuscular
1
junctions by hydrolyzing ACh. Nerve agents (e.g., sarin, VX, tabun, and soman)
exert their acute toxicity through inhibition of AChE by forming a covalent P-O bond
with the serine hydroxyl group at the active site (A-site) of the enzyme. The
subsequent accumulation of unhydrolyzed ACh at neuronal synapses and
neuromuscular junctions results in cholinergic crisis, respiratory distress, convulsive
2
seizures and ultimately death. Considering their potential threats to the military and
the public (such as the terrorist attacks in Tokyo subway in 1995 and the recent Syria
3
civil war), it is of great importance to find an efficient way to reactivate the nerve
agent-inhibited enzyme.
Phosphylated AChE can be reactivated by nucleophilic agents such as oximes
(e.g., pralidoxime or 2-PAM, trimedoxime or TMB-4, obidoxime, HI-6, and MMB-4,
Fig.1).4,5 Unfortunately, all the current available reactivators are quaternary oximes.
They provide little or no protection against neurological effects of organophosphate
(OP) exposure in the central nervous system (CNS) due to their poor blood-brain
barrier (BBB) penetration due to their permanent charges,6,7 while the nerve agents
can readily diffuse through the BBB and inhibited the central AChE quickly.8-10 To
overcome this problem, a number of nonquaternary reactivators was designed and
synthesized (e.g. monoisonitrosoacetone or MINA, amidine-oximes, pro-2-PAM and
RS194B Fig. 2).11-14 Their BBB penetration was facilitated as a result of increased
lipophilicity. They showed obvious superiority to charged 2-PAM as antidotes for
CNS poisoning. Presently, few uncharged reactivators were found to show antidotal
efficiency for soman-inhibited AChE.15,16
HI-6 was the first quaternary oxime that demonstrated reactivation efficiency for
17
soman-inhibited AChE. Nevertheless, HI-6 encountered the same problem of poor
BBB penetration owing to its permanent charges.18,19 Moreover, the resulting
phosphylated oximes (such as intermediate c, Fig. 3) still has high reactivation
activity, and they can act as a nerve agent which may lead to secondary poisoning of
3

20
AChE (also known as recapture phenomenon, Fig. 3, left). Thus it is of primary
importance to develop uncharged reactivators with little or no recapture activity for
soman poisoning.
Recently, a series of ortho-hydroxylbenzaldoximes were found showing ability to
efficiently and selectively cleave the P-S bond of organophosphorus nerve agents.
Moreover, the yielding phosphylated intermediate f can rapidly form isoxazole g and
non-toxic phosphonic acid h through an intramolecular attack of the phenol onto the
nitrogen atom (Fig. 3, right).21,22 It prevent the recapture phenomenon, allowing the
discovery of a more efficient uncharged structural scaffold for centrally acting
reactivators of phosphylated AChE. However, these nucleophiles exhibited poor
affinity to the inhibited enzyme due to the loss of permanent charges, which lead to
high dissociation constants (K
group of HI-6 would interact with the peripheral site (P-site) of AChE and increase its
affinity. Although its reactivation rate constant (K ) is lower than 2-PAM (0.44±0.15
D
). It was believed that the second quaternary pyridyl
r
-1
-1
min vs 0.73±0.09 min ), the bimolecular reactivation rate constant (Kr2) of HI-6
r2=9.0 mM -1min ) was greatly improved in comparison to 2-PAM (Kr2=2.3
-1
(K
-1
-1
-1
mM min ) due to its higher affinity for VX-hAChE ( K
D
=50±26 μM for HI-6 vs
-1
20,23
K =300±140μM for 2-PAM).
D
Moreover, it was found that the mono-oximes’
affinity to AChE and their reactivation potency would be greatly enhanced after a
peripheral site ligand (PSL) of AChE was linked, such as reactivator 7h (Fig. 2).24
Accordingly, we used a dual site binding strategy to attach the
ortho-hydroxylbenzaldoximes to some PSLs in a similar way as HI-6. As a
preliminary attempt, simple aromatic groups were used as PSLs, which was expected
to interact with the aromatic group in the P-site and compensate the
ortho-hydroxylbenzaldoximes’s affinity to AChE. Their lipophilicity (S+logP) and
BBB penetration (S+logBBB) was estimated (data shown in Table 1). They were
expected to show higher BBB penetration ability due to improved lipophilicity.
Moreover, these oximes were expected to be effective reactivators against
soman-inhibited AChE due to their structure similarity to HI-6. Additionally,
molecular docking simulations demonstrated that the resulting conjugates interacted
4

with AChE in a dual site binding mode as predicted. The results suggested that the
phenol group may act as a proper PSL. Docked conformations of moleculars 8a and
8
b were depicted in Fig. 4 and it can be observed that the PSLs interact with the
AChE P-site in a π-π sandwiching way, while the oxime groups were located at the
A-site, which were supposed to act as reactivation groups.
2
2
. Materials and methods
.1.Chemicals
1
All reagents and solvents were used as received from commercial sources. H
NMR and 13C NMR spectra were recorded at 400 MHz and 100 MHz on a
JNM-ECA-400 instrument in CDCl or DMSO-d , respectively. Proton and carbon
3
6
chemical shifts are expressed in parts per million (ppm) relative to internal
tetramethylsilane (TMS) and coupling constants (J) are expressed in Hertz (Hz).
Low-resolution mass spectra were obtained using an API 3000 LC/MS with an ESI
source and high-resolution mass spectra were obtained using an Agilent G6230A TOF
LC/MS with an ESI source. Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) was carried out on
alumina sheets precoated with silica gel 10-40 um (pH 6.2-6.8) and the
chromatography was performed on silica gel (200-300 mesh), compounds were
visualized under UV light at 254 nm, R values were given for guidance. Analytical
f
HPLC was performed on a Agilent 1260 instrument equipped with a DAD detector
under the following conditions: Innoval C18 column (5 μm, 100 Å, 4.6×250 mm)
with MeOH and 0.1% aq. trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) as eluents [0.1% aq. TFA/MeOH
(90/10) 5 min, followed by linear gradient from 10% to 80% of MeOH 40 (min)] at a
flow rate of 1.0 mL/min and UV detection at 270 nm. The details of synthetic
procedures can be found in the Supplementary data.
2
.2. General in vitro hAChE screening information
Human acetylcholinesterase (hAChE), bovine serum albumin (BSA),
acetylthiocholine (ATCh), 5, 5-dithiobis-2-nitrobenzoic acid (DTNB) and 2-PAM
were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich. HI-6 were synthesized ourselves according to
the literature protocols.25, 26 Soman was obtained from Anti chemical command and
Engineering Institute of the Chinese people's Liberation Army. Centrifugation was
5

°
conducted at 4 C in a 3-18K instrument from Sigma, the absorption was measured on
a Bio Rad Microplate Reader Model 550 (Parts).
At the beginning of each experiments, the stock solution of hAChE (dissolved in
2
0 mM HEPES, pH 8.0, contain 0.1% TRITON X-100, from Sigma) were diluted by
°
PBS (0.1 M, pH 7.4, 0.1% BSA) and stored at 0-4 C. Soman was diluted in distilled
-8
water to 5*10 M concentration. 10 mM oxime concentration solutions were prepared
in water contain 2.5% acetic acid and 10% PEG-400. They were further diluted by
PBS (0.1 M, pH 7.4) to 3 mM concentrations. It was found that there was no effect of
CH COOH or PEG-400 on hAChE by a control experiment.
3
2
.3.hAChE inhibition experiments with oximes
Each oxime was tested for its ability to inhibit the enzyme activity of hAChE in
6-well plate as measured by the time-dependent hydrolysis of acetylthiocholine
9
(ATCh) in which the product (thiocholine) was detected by reaction with the Ellman's
reagent, 5, 5′-dithiodis-2-nitrobenzoic acid (DTNB) and absorbance at 415
nm. Initially 10 μL of hAChE (20 U/L in 0.1 M PBS, pH 8.0, 0.1% BSA) was
incubated with 5 μL of each oxime (final concentrations: 0.2, 2, 100, 500 and 1000
µM) for 30 min at 25°C. A blank experiment (positive control) was run in parallel in
which oxime was replaced by PBS. For each sample above in the 96-well plate, 30 µl
of ATCh (3.0 mM in 0.1 M PBS, pH 8.0, 0.1% BSA) along with 150 µl DTNB (0.75
mM in 0.1 M PBS, pH 7.0) and 10 µl HCl (0.1 M) was added in each well. Reaction
product was monitored every 5 minutes, up to 20 minutes by testing the absorption
2
7
value at 415 nm (0<abs<2.5). Enzyme activity was calculated by using the
formula: %Activity= 100*S/P. (S=absorption value of test substance; P = absorption
value of positive control (100% activity)). IC50 was determined by non-linear fitting
using the standard IC50 equation: %Activity = 100*IC50/(IC50+[Ox]).28
2
.4.hAChE reactivation experiments with oximes
A stock solution of hAChE (20 U/mL, from sigma) was diluted 50-fold with
PBS (0.1 M, pH 8.0, 0.1% BSA). The diluted hAChE (175 μL) was incubated with
-8
soman (5*10 M, 325 μL) and an excess of soman was removed from inhibited
enzyme immediately by filtration through a 10 kDa MWCO filter with a modified
6

PES membrane (Amicon Ultra-0.5, Millipore Corporation, Billerica, MA) at 4 °C,
followed by two washes prior to the final resuspension in PBS/BLG (pH 7.4). The
remaining solution in the filter (50 μL) was diluted to 3.5 mL with PBS (0.1 M, pH
7
.4, 0.1% BSA). Under these conditions, 95% or greater inhibition of enzyme was
gotten and soman was diluted more than 7000-fold, indicating that most of soman was
removed and inhibition of hAChE had been terminated. Then the inhibited enzyme
°
(
20 U/L, 80 μL) was incubated with oximes (40 μL, 3 mM) at 37 C for 10 min to 24
h (final concentration of oximes was 1 mM). At different time intervals, 15 μL of the
incubation mixture was taken and enzyme activity was measured by using same
method described in section 2.3.
Blank samples were run in parallel and consisted of: (a) A positive control (P):
uninhibited enzyme (80 μL) was used instead of the inhibited enzyme; (b) a negative
control (N): PBS (40 μL, 0.1 M, pH 7.4, 0.1% BSA) was used instead of oximes.
Reactivation was calculated using the formula: %Reactivation 100*(S-N)/(P-N).29
2
.5.ADMET Predictions
In this study, we evaluated lipophilicity and BBB penetration potency of all the
compounds through in silico predictions by using ADMET Predictor software version
.0 (Pharmogo Co., Limited.), which had been used by Lin et al and Hassan et al and
7
was considered as the most accurate, quick and useful tool to predict physicochemical
and biological properties of drug-like chemicals.30,31
Initially structures of the compounds were saved in the ‘sdf’ format using
ChemBio3D Ultra software (Cambridge Soft Corporation, 2013). The ‘sdf’ file of
molecular structures of these compounds was uploaded into the ADMET predictor
software, pH value was set at 7.4, pK
all associative models’ option was selected. The program is executed to calculate the
various parameters such as S+logP, S+S , S+Peff, S+logBBB, S+Vd and so on. The
a
was limited to 1-14 and the ‘activate-one-out in
w
predicted data can be saved as output file in ‘xls’ format. The predicted S+logP and
S+logBBB values were listed in Table 1. S+logP means predicted octanol-water
partition coefficient and S+logBBB means predicted log(Cbrain/Cblood), where Cbrain
stands for compounds’ the concentration of compound in the brain and Cblood stands
7

for concentration of compound in the blood. A higher S+LogP value indicates higher
lipophilicity and a higher S+logBBB value indicates higher BBB penetration ability.
3
3
. Results and discussion
.1. Synthesis
The synthetic routes of these reactivators were highlighted in scheme 1. It was
started with chloromethylation of different salicylaldehydes 1, 2, 3 to give the
intermediates 4, 5, 6 in excellent yields. At the same time, different benzaldehydes
1
0a, 10b and 10c were treated under reductive amination conditions with ethylamine
and sodium triacetoxyborohydride to provide the tertiary amines 11a, 11b and 11c in
4% to 69% yields. Then condensation between the benzyl chlorides 4, 5, 6 and the
amines 11a, 11b and 11c produced the desired aldehyde derivatives 4a-6a, 4b-6b and
c-6c in moderate to good yields. Finally, treatment of the latters with
hydroxyl-ammonium chloride afforded the target oximes 7a-9a, 7b-9b and 7c-9c in
5
4
5
1% to 93% yields.
3
.2. Inhibition evaluation
A proper affinity to AChE is essential for a good reactivator while strong
3
2
inhibition of AChE should avoided, because it would result in heavy toxicity. Thus it
is necessary to evaluate the AChE inhibition abilities of these oximes firstly. HI-6 and
2
4
an efficient nonquaternary reactivator 7h were used as reference compounds. IC50
was determined and displayed in Fig. 5. It can be found that these new synthesized
oximes were moderate or weak inhibitors of hAChE with IC50 greater than 100 μM. It
allowed a proper affinity to hAChE for reactivation of the poisoned enzyme. The
results encouraged us to proceed to the reactivation experiments.
3
.3.In vitro reactivation evaluation
The search for antidotes and reactivators of OP-inhibited AChE started more
than 60 years ago and the theory and methodology for evaluation of reactivation
3
3
kinetic of OP-inhibited AChE had been established. However, soman-inhibited
hAChE undergo an extremely rapid aging process (the aging half-time being in the
°
34-37
range of 2-3 min at 37 C), and aged hAChE was quite difficult to be reactivated.
Thus the concentration of non-aged soman-hAChE decreased quickly and
8

complicated the evaluation of reactivation kinetics of soman-inhibited hAChE. In
order to get an effective assessment of these new synthesized
reactivators, %Reacrivation at different time intervals was determined, which can
directly reflect the reactivation ability of these tested oximes.
The results of the reactivation experiment under physiological conditions are
listed in Table 1. It was apparent that this new series of reactivators demonstrated
obvious reactivation potency against soman-inhibited hAChE, while 2-APM and the
reference uncharged oxime 7h exhibited no reactivation ability. Oximes 7b-9b were
more efficient reactivators than the others. Oxime 8b was highlighted as the most
efficient one, albeit, it still lagged behind the efficient in vitro reactivator, HI-6. As
the reactivation time prolonged, reactivation potency of HI-6 show no obvious change
during the first half hour and it tended to remain steady after 2 h. The reactivation
potency of these new tertiary oximes was also fairly stable up to 24 h. It may be due
to rapid aging of soman-inhibited hAChE.
Experiments were performed (oxime final concentration 1mM) in triplicate at 37
°C in phosphate buffer (0.10 M, pH=7.4); hAChE inhibition percentages were greater
than 95%; the reactivation potency was calculated relatively to the poisoned control.
S+logP and S+logBBB was predicted by ADMET Predictor software version 7.0, a
higher S+LogP value indicates higher lipophilicity and a higher S+logBBB value
indicates higher BBB penetration ability.
It is obvious that these reactivators bearing pyridinealdoximes show higher
reactivating potency against soman-inhibited hAChE in contrast to 7h, which contains
an imidazolealdoxime. In another hand, a shorter linker with a hetero atom between
the P-site ligands and the A-site ligands may be beneficial to reactivating
soman-inhibited hAChE, while the linker of 7h is too long and has no hetero atom.
However, loss of permanent charges decreases the nucleophilic ability of oxime
groups in 7a-9c, which may account for their lower reactivating potency to
soman-inhibited hAChE than HI-6. Therefore, pyridinealdoxime and shorter linker
with hetero atom, especially a linker similar to that of HI-6, maybe key factors to
develop efficient reactivators for soman poisoning.
9

Apart from these, it can be concluded that compounds (7b-9b) with a
4
-hydroxybenzyl P-site ligand may produce higher reactivation activity against
soman-inhibited hAChE. At the same time, it was noticeable that reactivators 7b-9b
were relatively heavier inhibitors of hAChE (Fig. 5), which indicated a higher affinity
for hAChE. Consequently, we summarized that the greater affinity of 7b-9b to
hAChE may partially account for their higher reactivation efficiency. We believed
that it was necessary to improve hAChE affinity for much better reactivators.
However, strong inhibition of hAChE should be avoided because it would result in
toxicity.25
3
.4.ADMET Predictions
As we have mentioned previously, S+logBBB is the predicted result of
log(Cbrain/Cblood), so a higher S+logBBB value indicates higher BBB penetration
ability. Sakurada et al. found that the concentration of 2-PAM in the corpus striatum
3
8
is about 10% of the plasma level in rat in vivo. Falb and Erdmann observed that
central nervous system concentrations of obidoxime amounting to 3-5% of plasma
3
9
levels in both rats and mice in vivo. It can be found that the predicted S+logBBB
values of 2-PAM (-0.69) and obidoxime(-1.26, not listed in Table 1) are almost in
accordance with these experimental results. Accordingly, these new synthesized
compounds were expected to penetrate BBB much more easily than 2-PAM and HI-6
as a result of their greatly tremendous S+logBBB values.
4
. Conclusion
In conclusion, based on a dual site binding strategy and intended to avoid the
recapture phenomenon of the reactivated AChE from the very beginning, a new series
of nonquaternary ortho-hydroxylbenzaldoximes with totally novel structures were
designed, synthesized and tested in this paper. To our best knowledge, they were the
first family of uncharged reactivators showing obvious in vitro reactivation efficacy
against soman-inhibited hAChE until now. Although not as efficient as HI-6, they
were expected to exhibit higher BBB penetration and demonstrate promising in vivo
reactivation ability as a result of their nonquaternary structures. The in vivo assays are
in process and the corresponding results will be discussed in a future paper.
10

Furthermore, these new structural scaffolds also lay the foundation for development
of more efficient centrally acting reactivators for soman poisoning.
Conflicts of interest statement
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Major Program of Ministry of Science and
Technology of China (No: 2015ZX09J15104-003 002). The excellent technical
assistance of Ms Yan Zhu in the reactivation experiments is gratefully acknowledged.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online
version, at
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14

Fig. 1 Structures of current available quaternary AChE reactivators.
15

Fig. 2 Structures of uncharged AChE reactivators.
16

Fig. 3 The mechanism of recapture phenomenon and intramolecular cyclization of
the phosphylated oximes
17

Fig. 4 Docked conformations of molecules 8a (left) and 8b (right) in the A-site gorge
of sarinnonaged-mAChE (pdb code: 2WHP). The key amino acid residues in the P-site
include Tyr72, Tyr124, Trp286, Tyr341 and Asp74; in the A-site include Ser-sarin203
or SGB203, Glu334 and His447. The docked conformations of the reactivators are
depicted as stick model in yellow and the key amino acid residues as stick model in
grey.
18

IC50-hAChE
1
000
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
7
a
8a
9a
7b
8b
9b
7c
8c
9c
reactivators
Fig. 5 IC50 of uncharged reactivators 7a-9a, 7b-9b and 7c-9c.
19

Scheme 1 Synthesis of reactivators 7a-7c, 8a-8c and 9a-9c. Conditions and
°
reagents: (a) con. HCl, (CH
2
O)
n
, 50-60 C, 2-3 h, 77%-97%; (b1) 1. aq. C
2
H
5
NH
2
°
°
(
65%-70%), 50 C，3 h；2. NaBH(CO
2
CH
(65%-70%), CaO, C
OH, 3h (over two steps) 55%; (b3) 1. C
3
)
3
, C
2
H
5
OH, 50-60 C, 1 h (over two steps)
6
9%; (b2) 1. aq. C
2
H
5
NH
2
2
H
5
OH, r.t., 2.5 h; 2. NaBH(CO
NH2·HCl, C OH, r.t., 0.5 h; 2.
Cl , r.t. 1h,
2
CH ) ,
3
3
C
2
H
5
2
H
5
2
H
5
°
NaBH
4
, C
2
H
5
OH, 0 C, 3 h (over two steps) 54%; (c) DIEPA, CH
2
2
5
4%-98%; (d) NH
2
OH, HCl, C
2
H
5
OH/ CH
2
Cl , r.t., 1h, 51%-93%.
2
20

Table 1 Reactivation of soman-inhibited hAChE by 7a-9a, 7b-9b, 7c-9c and the
reference oximes at different time intervals and predicted logP and logBBB values of
7
a-9a, 7b-9b, 7c-9c.
oximes
Reactivation (%)
0 min 30 min
28.0±1.0 28.2±1.8 37.5±6.6 36.9±3.7 -5.03
S+logP
S+LogBBB
1
2 h
24 h
HI-6
-1.39
-0.69
-0.47
-0.18
-0.16
-0.14
-0.13
-0.18
-0.09
-0.31
-0.27
-0.29
2
7
7
8
9
7
8
9
7
8
9
-PAM
1.9±0.5
-0.9±0.1
9.7±0.5
9.0±0.5
2.1±0.7
-1.0±0.2
9.5±1.1
8.1±0.6
1.3±0.2
1.8±0.6
-2.81
4.89
2.95
3.55
h
a
a
a
b
b
b
c
-0.2±0.0
-1.0±0.5
10.4±2.1 9.9±0.8
10.0±0.9 7.0±0.7
10.3±0.1 10.4±0.9 12.5±0.1 10.8±1.5 3.32
14.4±0.1 14.1±0.7 16.3±2.0 15.5±0.8 2.72
20.1±0.5 19.0±2.1 22.4±0.8 19.7±1.0 3.39
13.9±0.8 13.4±0.8 16.2±0.3 13.4±0.3 3.11
11.1±0.6 11.1±0.0 14.8±0.5 11.0±0.4 2.97
c
7.7±0.4
9.2±0.8
9.2±0.8
10.8±0.7 8.9±1.1
3.35
3.56
c
10.0±0.5 11.0±0.2 9.9±0.2
21