Structure-activity relationships of GPX4 inhibitor warheads.

Structure-activity relationships of GPX4 inhibitor warheads.
Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 2020 Sep 10;:127538
Authors: Eaton JK, Furst L, Cai LL, Viswanathan VS, Schreiber SL
Abstract
Direct inhibition of GPX4 requires covalent modification of the active-site selenocysteine. While phenotypic screening has revealed that activated alkyl chlorides and masked nitrile oxides can inhibit GPX4 covalently, a systematic assessment of potential electrophilic warheads with the capacity to inhibit cellular GPX4 has been lacking. Here, we survey more than 25 electrophilic warheads across several distinct GPX4-targeting scaffolds. We find that electrophiles with attenuated reactivity compared to chloroacetamides are unable to inhibit GPX4 despite the expected nucleophilicity of the selenocysteine residue. However, highly reactive propiolamides we uncover in this study can substitute for chloroacetamide and nitroisoxazole warheads in GPX4 inhibitors. Our observations suggest that electrophile masking strategies, including those we describe for propiolamide- and nitrile-oxide-based warheads, may be promising for the development of improved covalent GPX4 inhibitors.
PMID: 32920142 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters - September 9, 2020 Category: Chemistry Authors: Eaton JK, Furst L, Cai LL, Viswanathan VS, Schreiber SL Tags: Bioorg Med Chem Lett Source Type: research