Discovery of Evodiamine Derivatives as Highly Selective PDE5 Inhibitors Targeting a Unique Allosteric Pocket

J Med Chem. 2020 Sep 10;63(17):9828-9837. doi: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.0c00983. Epub 2020 Aug 27.

Abstract

Clinical use of phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) inhibitors is limited by several side effects due to weak isoform selectivity. Herein, a unique allosteric pocket of PDE5 is identified by molecular modeling and structural biology, which enables the discovery of highly selective PDE5 inhibitors from natural product evodiamine (EVO). The crystal structure of PDE5 with bound EVO derivative (S)-7e revealed that binding of (S)-7e to the novel allosteric pocket induced dramatic conformation changes in the H-loop with a maximum 24 Å movement of their Cα atoms. This movement directly blocks the binding of substrate/inhibitors to the PDE5 active site, which is different from all traditional PDE5 inhibitors such as sildenafil, tadalafil, and vardenafil. These derivatives showed >570-fold selectivity over PDE6C and PDE11A and achieved potent efficacy for the effective treatment of pulmonary hypertension in vivo.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Allosteric Site
  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Animals
  • Cyclic Nucleotide Phosphodiesterases, Type 5 / chemistry
  • Cyclic Nucleotide Phosphodiesterases, Type 5 / metabolism*
  • Drug Discovery
  • Male
  • Mice
  • Molecular Docking Simulation
  • Phosphodiesterase 5 Inhibitors / chemistry
  • Phosphodiesterase 5 Inhibitors / metabolism*
  • Phosphodiesterase 5 Inhibitors / pharmacokinetics
  • Protein Binding
  • Quinazolines / chemistry
  • Quinazolines / metabolism*
  • Quinazolines / pharmacokinetics
  • Rats, Sprague-Dawley
  • Sequence Alignment
  • Structure-Activity Relationship

Substances

  • Phosphodiesterase 5 Inhibitors
  • Quinazolines
  • evodiamine
  • Cyclic Nucleotide Phosphodiesterases, Type 5
  • Pde5a protein, mouse