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Publication Abstract from PubMed

In an effort to discover oral inverse agonists of RORgammat to treat inflammatory diseases, a new 2,6-difluorobenzyl ether series of cyclopentyl sulfones were found to be surprisingly more potent than the corresponding alcohol derivatives. When combined with a more optimized phenyl ((R)-3-phenylpyrrolidin-3-yl)sulfone template, the 2,6-difluorobenzyl ethers yielded a set of very potent RORgammat inverse agonists (e.g., compound 26, RORgammat Gal4 EC50 11 nM) that are highly selective against PXR, LXRalpha and LXRbeta. After optimizing for stability in human and mouse liver microsomes, compounds 29 and 38 were evaluated in vivo and found to have good oral bioavailability (56% and 101%, respectively) in mice. X-ray co-crystal structure of compound 27 in RORgammat revealed that the bulky benzyl ether group causes helix 11 of the protein to partially uncoil to create a new, enlarged binding site, which nicely accommodates the benzyl ether moiety, leading to net potency gain.

Discovery of 2,6-difluorobenzyl ether series of phenyl ((R)-3-phenylpyrrolidin-3-yl)sulfones as surprisingly potent, selective and orally bioavailable RORgammat inverse agonists.,Duan JJ, Jiang B, Lu Z, Stachura S, Weigelt CA, Sack JS, Khan J, Ruzanov M, Wu DR, Yarde M, Shen DR, Zhao Q, Salter-Cid LM, Carter PH, Murali Dhar TG Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 2020 Jul 29;30(19):127441. doi: 10.1016/j.bmcl.2020.127441. PMID:32736080^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.