Discovering Echinococcus granulosus thioredoxin glutathione reductase inhibitors through site-specific dynamic combinatorial chemistry.

In this study, we report a strategy using dynamic combinatorial chemistry for targeting the thioredoxin (Trx)-reductase catalytic site on Trx glutathione reductase (TGR), a pyridine nucleotide thiol-disulfide oxido-reductase. We chose Echinococcus granulosus TGR since it is a bottleneck enzyme of platyhelminth parasites and a validated pharmacological target. A dynamic combinatorial library (DCL) was constructed based on thiol-disulfide reversible exchange. We demonstrate the use of 5-thio-2-nitrobenzoic acid (TNB) as a non-covalent anchor fragment in a DCL templated by E. granulosus TGR. The heterodimer of TNB and bisthiazolidine (2af) was identified, upon library analysis by HPLC (IC50 = 24 μM). Furthermore, 14 analogs were synthetically prepared and evaluated against TGR. This allowed the study of a structure-activity relationship and the identification of a disulfide TNB-tricyclic bisthiazolidine (2aj) as the best enzyme inhibitor in these series, with an IC50 = 24 μM. Thus, our results validate the use of DCL for targeting thiol-disulfide oxido-reductases.