Discovery of imidazopyridine derivatives as novel c-Met kinase inhibitors: Synthesis, SAR study, and biological activity.

Receptor tyrosine kinase c-Met acts as an alternative angiogenic pathway in the process and contents of cancers. A series of imidazopyridine derivatives were designed and synthesized according to the established docking studies as possible c-Met inhibitors. Most of these imidazopyridine derivatives displayed nanomolar potency against c-Met in both biochemical enzymatic screens and cellular pharmacology studies. Especially, compound 7g exhibited the most inhibitory activity against c-Met with IC50 of 53.4nM and 253nM in enzymatic and cellular level, respectively. Following that, the compound 7g was docked into the protein of c-Met and the structure-activity relationship was analyzed in detail. These findings indicated that the novel imidazopyridine derivative compound 7g was a potential c-Met inhibitor deserving further investigation for cancer treatment.

Synthesis and biological evaluation of GPR40/FFAR1 agonists containing 3,5-dimethylisoxazole.

GPR40 is an attractive target due to its glucose-stimulated insulin secretion effect with low risk of causing hypoglycemia, which also can be seen from the clinical studies using TAK-875 (fasiglifam). In the present studies, we discovered a series of analogues containing 3,5-dimethylisoxazole as potent GPR40 agonists, especially compound 11k with an EC50 value of 15.9 nM. Moreover, compound 11k reduced glucose excursion to 23.1% in ICR mice and 29.5% in type 2 diabetic C57BL/6 mice at 30 mg/kg. It also exhibited satisfactory PK profile. Docking studies were conducted to explain the interaction mode of this series. In summary, compound 11k with robust efficacy in vitro and in vivo is a promising drug candidate for further investigation.