Design, synthesis and pharmacological evaluation of some novel indanone derivatives as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors for the management of cognitive dysfunction.

The present study reports the effect of indanone derivatives on scopolamine induced deficit cholinergic neurotransmission serving as promising leads for the therapeutics of cognitive dysfunction. Eleven compounds 54-64 have been designed, synthesised and evaluated against behavioural alterations using step down passive avoidance protocol at a dose of 0.5 mg/kg with Donepezil (1) as the reference standard. All the synthesised compounds were evaluated for their in vitro acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition at five different concentrations using mice brain homogenate as the source of the enzyme. Compounds 54, 56, 59 and 64 displayed appreciable activity with an IC50 value of 14.06 µM, 12.30 µM, 14.06 µM and 12.01 µM, respectively towards acetylcholinesterase inhibition. The molecular docking study performed to predict the binding mode of the compounds suggested that these compounds could bind appreciably to the amino acids present at the active site of recombinant human acetylcholinesterase (rhAChE). The behavioural, biochemical and in silico pharmacokinetic studies were in concordance with each other.