Studies on the pharmacological properties of novel arylene bis(methylketone) compounds using solid-phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography

Small molecule inhibitor of HIV-1 nuclear import suppresses HIV-1 replication in human lymphoid tissue ex vivo: a potential addition to current anti-HIV drug repertoire

Despite recent progress in anti-HIV therapy, which has to do mainly with introduction of protease inhibitors into clinical practice, drug toxicity and emergence of drug-resistant isolates during the long-term treatment of the patients necessitates search for new drugs that can be added to currently used components of a multi-drug cocktail in highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART). Recently, we described a class of arylene bis(methylketone) compounds that inhibit nuclear import of HIV-1 pre-integration complexes and suppress viral replication in macrophages and PBMC in vitro. In this report, we demonstrate that one of these compounds, CNI-H1194, inhibited HIV-1 replication in primary lymphoid tissue ex vivo. The compound did not antagonize the activity of currently used anti-HIV drugs that inhibit viral reverse transcriptase or protease. These results suggest that arylene bis(methylketone) compounds might be a valuable addition to HAART.

Studies on the mechanism of antimalarial action of a novel arylene bis(methylketone)

2-Amino-4-(3,5-diacetylphenyl)amino-1,6-dimethylpyrimidinium chloride (CNI-H0294) is a novel arylene bis(methylketone) compound that displays antimalarial activity against chloroquine- and pyrimethamine-resistant Plasmodium falciparum clones. The compound has been found to be concentrated into infected erythrocytes, with 80-179 microM accumulated when parasites were cultured in the presence of 1.0 microM CNI-H0294. Uninfected erythrocytes, in contrast, only accumulated 2.5-3.4 microM CNI-H0294 under identical conditions. Using postmitochondrial supernatants from a number of parasite clones, the compound was found to inhibit dihydrofolate reductase (EC 1.5.1.3) activity with an IC50 of 243-483 microM. Thus, while CNI-H0294 is not a powerful inhibitor of plasmodial dihydrofolate reductase, the accumulation of the compound into infected erythrocytes, when correlated to the external ED50 concentration against parasite growth in vitro, reaches concentrations sufficient to inhibit the malarial enzyme.