Novel, highly potent adenosine deaminase inhibitors containing the pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine ring system. Synthesis, structure-activity relationships, and molecular modeling studies.

This study reports the synthesis of a number of 1- and 2-alkyl derivatives of the 4-aminopyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine (APP) nucleus and their evaluation as inhibitors of ADA from bovine spleen. The 2-substituted aminopyrazolopyrimidines proved to be potent inhibitors, most of them exhibiting K(i) values in the nanomolar/subnanomolar range. In this series the inhibitory activity is enhanced with the increase in length of the alkyl chain, reaching a maximum with the n-decyl substituent. Insertion of a 2'-hydroxy group in the n-decyl chain gave 3k, whose (R)-isomer displayed the highest inhibitory potency of the series (K(i) 0.053 nM), showing an activity 2 orders of magnitude higher than that of (+)-EHNA (K(i) 1.14 nM), which was taken as the reference standard. Docking simulations of aminopyrazolopyrimidines into the ADA binding site were also performed, to rationalize the structure-activity relationships of this class of inhibitors.