Design and Synthesis of New Dual Binding Site Cholinesterase Inhibitors: in vitro Inhibition Studies with in silico Docking.

Cholinesterases (ChEs) play a vital role in the regulation of cholinergic transmission. The inhibition of ChEs is considered to be involved in increasing acetylcholine level in the brain and thus has been implicated in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. We have designed and synthesized a series of novel indole derivatives and screened them for inhibition of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE). Most of the tested compounds exhibited inhibitory activity against AChE and BChE. Among them 4f and 6e showed the highest AChE inhibitory activity with IC50 91.21±0.06 and 68.52±0.04 µM, respectively. However compound 5a exhibited the highest inhibitory activity against BChE (IC50 55.21±0.12 µM).

2-(1H-Indol-3-yl)acetohydrazide.

In the title compound C(10)H(11)N(3)O, the mean plane of the indole ring system (r.m.s. deviation 0.0131 Å) subtends a dihedral angle of 87.27 (5)° to the almost planar acetohydrazide substituent (r.m.s. deviation 0.0291 Å). In the crystal, bifurcated N-H⋯(O,N) and N-H⋯N hydrogen bonds involving the pyrrole N-H grouping combine to form zigzag chains along a. Additional N-H⋯O contacts from the hydrazide N-H group augmented by C-H⋯π inter-actions link the mol-ecules into chains along the a axis. The overall effect of these contacts is a three-dimensional network structure with mol-ecules stacked along the b-axis direction.