Redesigning Berberines and Sanguinarines to Target Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase for Enhanced Anti-Inflammatory Efficacy.

Amino-berberine has remained underexplored due to limited biological evaluation and total synthesis approaches. In inflammation therapy, soluble Epoxide Hydrolase (sEH) is a promising target, yet natural scaffolds remain underutilized. Our study advances the field by redesigning natural compounds─berberine and sanguinarine─with strategic urea modifications and hydrogenated frameworks, creating novel sEH inhibitors with enhanced in vivo efficacy. Through total synthesis and structure-activity relationship studies of amino-berberine derivatives, chiral tetrahydroberberine (R)-14i (coded LXZ-42) emerged as the most potent lead, with an IC50 value of 1.20 nM. (R)-14i showed reduced CYP enzyme impact, potent therapeutic effects on acute pancreatitis, no acute in vivo toxicity, and superior pharmacokinetic properties, with an oral bioavailability of 89.3%. Structural insights from crystallography of (R)-14i bound to sEH revealed key interactions: three with the tetrahydroberberine framework and three hydrogen bonds with the urea group, highlighting (R)-14i as a novel lead for sEH-targeted therapies in inflammation.

• Publication year

  2024

• Venue

  Journal of Medicinal Chemistry

• Publication date

  2024-12-10

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Chemistry

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.4c02202PMID 39658523
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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