Discovery of novel non-carboxylic acid 5-amino-4-cyanopyrazole derivatives as potent and highly selective LPA1R antagonists.

High throughput screening (HTS) of our chemical library identified 3-alkylamino-2-aryl-5H-imidazo[1,2,b]pyrazol-7-carbonitrile 1 as a potent antagonist of the LPA1 receptor (LPA1R). Further evaluation of this class of compounds indicated that LPA1R antagonist activity originated from the degradation of the parent molecule in DMSO during the assay conditions. Here, we describe the isolation and characterization of the degradation products and their LPA1R antagonist activity. We further profiled these novel non-carboxylic acid LPA1R antagonists and demonstrated their inhibition of LPA-induced proliferation and contraction of normal human lung fibroblasts (NHLF).

Efficient and scalable method in isolation of polymethoxyflavones from orange peel extract by supercritical fluid chromatography.

Polymethoxyflavones (PMFs) from citrus genus are of particular interest because of their broad spectrum of biological activities, such as anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, and anti-atherogenic properties. Recently, the exploration into the beneficial health properties of PMFs in citrus fruits has dramatically increased. However, the supply of pure PMFs in the in vivo study is a limiting factor due to the difficulties in large-scale isolation of the interested PMFs. Therefore, the development of an efficient and a scalable separation method of PMFs is necessary and significant. In this paper, we report a newly developed method for efficient and relatively large-scale isolation of four PMFs from sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) peel by employing supercritical chromatography (SFC): nobiletin, tangeretin, 3,5,6,7,8,3',4'-heptamethoxyflavone and 5,6,7,4'-tetramethoxyflavone.

Exploration of liquid and supercritical fluid chromatographic chiral separation and purification of Nutlin-3--a small molecule antagonist of MDM2.

Inhibition of the MDM2-p53 interaction can stabilize the p53 protein and offer a novel strategy for cancer therapy. The imidazoline compound (Nutlin-3) is a promising small molecule antagonist of the MDM2-p53 interaction. This compound was synthesized as a racemic mixture, and one enantiomer is 100-200-fold more active than the other enantiomer. In this study, various enantiomeric separation approaches were explored to resolve the Nutlin-3 enantiomers using chiral supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) as well as chiral liquid chromatography (LC) under normal phase mode, reversed phase mode and polar organic phase mode. The chiral SFC method based on Chiralcel OD column showed superior separation in terms of selectivity and efficiency. Optimization of the chiral separation method enabled high throughput preparative scale purification. Ultimately, 5 g of racemic mixture were purified on Prep-SFC in 75 min with the recovery rate above 92%.

Comparison of supercritical fluid chromatography and liquid chromatography for the separation of urinary metabolites of nobiletin with chiral and non-chiral stationary phases.

Nobiletin (NOB), a polymethoxylated flavone found in sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) peel, is currently recognized as a promising anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor agent. It is believed that, by undergoing metabolic biotransformation in vivo, nobiletin is demethylated by hepatic P450 enzymes, yielding multiple hydroxylated metabolites. However, it has not been possible to date to separate the two demethylated nobiletin metabolites, 3'-demethyl-NOB and 4'-demethyl-NOB (regio-isomers) on reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC). Additionally, both display similar mass spectrometric fragmentation, resulting in difficulties to identify the dominant metabolite. A successful separation method was developed by utilizing supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) with chiral stationary phase. The separation was also attempted with normal-phase liquid chromatography (NPLC) in both chiral and non-chiral modes. Chromatographic separation for the two nobiletin metabolites was superior by SFC than by LC, especially using chiral stationary phase. By comparing the SFC profile of the synthesized standards, the major nobiletin metabolite in mouse urine was identified as 4'-demethyl-NOB, with the concentration of 28.9 microg/mL.