Title
Novel antimalarial chloroquine- and primaquine-quinoxaline 1,4-di-N-oxide hybrids: Design, synthesis, Plasmodium life cycle stage profile, and preliminary toxicity studies
Date Issued
05 October 2018
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Bonilla-Ramirez L.
Rios A.
Ramirez-Calderon G.
Beltrán-Hortelano I.
Franetich J.F.
Corcuera L.
Bordessoulles M.
Vettorazzi A.
López de Cerain A.
Aldana I.
Mazier D.
Pabón A.
Galiano S.
Universidad de Navarra
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Masson s.r.l.
Abstract
Emergence of drug resistance and targeting all stages of the parasite life cycle are currently the major challenges in antimalarial chemotherapy. Molecular hybridization combining two scaffolds in a single molecule is an innovative strategy for achieving these goals. In this work, a series of novel quinoxaline 1,4-di-N-oxide hybrids containing either chloroquine or primaquine pharmacophores was designed, synthesized and tested against both chloroquine sensitive and multidrug resistant strains of Plasmodium falciparum. Only chloroquine-based compounds exhibited potent blood stage activity with compounds 4b and 4e being the most active and selective hybrids at this parasite stage. Based on their intraerythrocytic activity and selectivity or their chemical nature, seven hybrids were then evaluated against the liver stage of Plasmodium yoelii, Plasmodium berghei and Plasmodium falciparum infections. Compound 4b was the only chloroquine-quinoxaline 1,4-di-N-oxide hybrid with a moderate liver activity, whereas compound 6a and 6b were identified as the most active primaquine-based hybrids against exoerythrocytic stages, displaying enhanced liver activity against P. yoelii and P. berghei, respectively, and better SI values than primaquine. Although both primaquine-quinoxaline 1,4-di-N-oxide hybrids slightly reduced the infection of mosquitoes, they inhibited sporogony of P. berghei and compound 6a showed 92% blocking of transmission. In vivo liver efficacy assays revealed that compound 6a showed causal prophylactic activity affording parasitaemia reduction of up to 95% on day 4. Absence of genotoxicity and in vivo acute toxicity were also determined. These results suggest the approach of primaquine-quinoxaline 1,4-di-N-oxide hybrids as new potential dual-acting antimalarials for further investigation.
Start page
68
End page
81
Volume
158
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Hematología Química medicinal
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85053002914
PubMed ID
Source
European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry
ISSN of the container
02235234
Sponsor(s)
This work was supported by COLCIENCIAS grant #111526934273 (contract RC-597-2013), PIUNA Project-University of Navarra and Foundation CAN (grant number: 70391). The authors are grateful to Universidad de Antioquia for its Sustainability Strategic Plan and the Institute of Tropical Health (ISTUN) of University of Navarra for their financial support and help. Leonardo Bonilla-Ramírez is funded by Colciencias Grants (528-2011), and Miguel Quiliano is grateful to “Programa Nacional de Innovación para la competitividad y productividad” (Innóvate-Perú) for his PhD scholarship (grant 065-FINCYT-BDE-2014). The authors greatly acknowledge Centre d'Immunologie et des Maladies Infectieuses-UPMC for the intership of BR-L. This work benefited from equipment and services from the CELIS cell culture core facility (Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle Epinière, Paris), a platform supported through the ANR grants, ANR-10-IAIHU-06 and ANR-11-INBS-0011-NeurATRIS. We are particularly grateful to David Akbar for his valuable assistance regarding automated fluorescence.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus