RESUMO
Ghrelin plays a major physiological role in the control of food intake, and inverse agonists of the ghrelin receptor (GHS-R1a) are widely considered to offer utility as antiobesity agents by lowering the set-point for hunger between meals. We identified an acylurea series of ghrelin modulators from high throughput screening and optimized binding affinity through structure-activity relationship studies. Furthermore, we identified specific substructural changes, which switched partial agonist activity to inverse agonist activity, and optimized physicochemical and DMPK properties to afford the non-CNS penetrant inverse agonist 22 (AZ-GHS-22) and the CNS penetrant inverse agonist 38 (AZ-GHS-38). Free feeding efficacy experiments showed that CNS exposure was necessary to obtain reduced food intake in mice, and it was demonstrated using GHS-R1a null and wild-type mice that this effect operates through a mechanism involving GHS-R1a.
Assuntos
Agonismo Inverso de Drogas , Receptores de Grelina/agonistas , Receptores de Grelina/antagonistas & inibidores , Ureia/análogos & derivados , Ureia/farmacologia , Relação Dose-Resposta a Droga , Humanos , Modelos Moleculares , Estrutura Molecular , Receptores de Grelina/metabolismo , Relação Estrutura-Atividade , Ureia/químicaRESUMO
The pharmaceutical industry, particularly the small molecule domain, faces unprecedented challenges of escalating costs, high attrition as well as increasing competitive pressure from other companies and from new treatment modes such as biological products. In other industries, process improvement approaches, such as Lean Sigma, have delivered benefits in speed, quality and cost of delivery. Examining the medicinal chemistry contributions to the iterative improvement process of design-make-test-analyse from a Lean Sigma perspective revealed that major improvements could be made. Thus, the cycle times of synthesis, as well as compound analysis and purification, were reduced dramatically. Improvements focused on team, rather than individual, performance. These new ways of working have consequences for staff engagement, goals, rewards and motivation, which are also discussed.