Abstract not available

Purines as a class of compounds have been implicated in many biological systems, including as adenosine receptor antagonists. A method of synthesising 2,6,9-trisubstituted purines would be useful to produce small libraries of compounds for probing adenosine receptor selectivity. A library of trisubstituted purines has been achieved using a solid-phase methodology. The electronic properties of the substrate were found to result in difficulties with the loading of substrate onto the resin. Theoretical calculations provided the basis for mono-substitution in order to activate the substrate. This modified substrate has loaded onto the resin in reproducible and high yields. Amine and thiol, on-resin, C-2 substitution was shown to proceed at room temperature. This represents significantly milder conditions than are generally seen in the literature. This is due to the activating effect of the carbamate linker chosen on the pyrimidine ring. This also results in a faster reaction rate than is seen in the corresponding solution-phase reaction. This study showed that the electronic profile of the loaded substrate was responsible for the low alkylation on the carbamate nitrogen of loaded dichloro- or C-6 substituted chloropyrimidines. This reaction was modified by activating the pyrimidine ring via C-2 substitution and has been shown to go to completion with three different alkyl groups to give a clean product direct from resin cleavage. On-resin nitro reduction had been planned. The resin bound product would then be carried on to the next step of resin cleavage and cyclisation of the imidazole ring to give the final purine products. On resin reduction could not be achieved, however, cleavage of the compound from the resin and reduction in solution was found to be efficient as the cyclisation reagents could be included in this step without interfering with yield or purity of products and so this represents a clear improvement upon the planned synthesis. Efforts to fully characterise the library brought up issues of purine NMR. Extremely broad signals were observed in the proton spectra of many of the compounds making assignments difficult. Broad 13C NMR signals have also been observed. Restricted rotation about the substituent N-C bond is responsible for these problems. Crystal structure data has confirmed the double bond character of this bond with one of the substituted pyrimidines. High temperature NMR experiments have demonstrated how this can be overcome and the fine structure of the spectra observed. HMBC and COSY correlations have been used alongside the 1H and 13C spectra to allow full characterisation of the compounds wherever possible. Receptor homology models were created and updated for all four adenosine receptor subtypes. Known adenosine agonists and antagonists were created and minimised for use in docking experiments. Receptor docking experimental data is reported. Binding assays are being carried out by a third party and will be submitted for publication at a later date. A small library of 2,6,9-trisubstituted purines has been synthesised, exemplifying an efficient and robust method to achieve pure compounds for biological evaluation. A good level of diversity has been achieved at each combinatorial position (two substitutions and an N-alkylation). Final compounds have been isolated in good yields with a high level of purity.

Part I of this thesis describes the synthesis of dehydro - perloline ( 3 ), a non basic material obtained from the degradation of the alkaloid perloline ( 1 ), the major alkaloid of New Zealand rye grass. Since a crucial reaction in this sequence involved a Schmidt reaction of fluorenols 4 or 5, some of the mechanistic aspects of this reaction have been investigated. Part II describes the synthesis of caprolactam derivatives 7 with the aim at finding new antagonists or analogues of the CNS inhibitory transmitter, gamma - aminobutyric acid ( GABA ). In Chapter 1, the synthesis of N - alkyl and N - arylcaprolac - tams is described. In Chapter 2, the synthesis, by several methods, of simple 3 - alkylcaprolactams is investigated. Chapter 3 describes synthetic methods for the preparation of 4 - substituted caprolactams. Chapter 4 presents the preparation of 5 - alkyl and 7 - alkyl - caprolactams by the Schmidt reaction on 4 - alkyl and 2 - alkylcyclo - hexanones. Chapter 5 describes some investigations of possible syntheses of 6 - alkylcaprolactams. Chapter 6 contains the results of testing of some lactams and thiolactams as well as their structure - activity relationships. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Department of Organic Chemistry, 1976.

Graduation date: 2003

Early predictions of a potential drug candidate’s time-course of effect and side-effects, based on models describing drug concentrations, drug effects and disease progression, would be valuable to make drug development more efficient. Pharmacodynamic modeling can incorporate and propagate prior knowledge and be used for simulations of different scenarios. In this thesis three population pharmacodynamic models were developed to describe the antipsychotic effects and the side-effects prolactin elevation and Extra Pyramidal Symptoms (EPS) following administration of D2-receptor antagonists, commonly used in the treatment of schizophrenia. Model parameter estimates of prolactin elevating potencies of six compounds correlated with in vitro values of receptor affinities, and parameters related to diurnal prolactin variation and tolerance were similar for the different compounds. The developed prolactin model can thereby be used to predict the time-course of prolactin elevation in patients for a drug candidate using information on in vitro affinity to the D2-receptor. Furthermore, the clinical antipsychotic effect and the prolactin elevation was found to correlate on the individual level for the three antipsychotic compounds investigated and a quantitative relation between D2-receptor occupancy in the brain and prolactin elevation was established. These results support the use of prolactin concentrations as a biomarker in drug development or for individual dose adjustments in clinical care. The developed model for spontaneously reported EPS adverse events, following treatment with one of five antipsychotics drugs, characterized both the duration and severity of EPS. The model successfully described both the proportions and number of transitions between severity grades and was shown to adequately simulate longitudinal categorical EPS data. Complex pharmacodynamic models are often associated with long estimation times and non-normal distributions of individual parameters. A method for shortening computation times by substituting differential equations for difference equations was evaluated and shown to be valuable for some models. In addition, transformation of distributions allowed for non-normal distributions of between-subject variability to be better characterized and thereby simulation properties were improved. In conclusion, population pharmacodynamic models for a range of D2-receptor antagonists were developed and together with the investigated methods the models can facilitate prediction of effects and side-effects in drug development.

Antiplatelet therapy with clopidogrel is widely used in patients with coronary artery disease, but the recent development of the new P2Y12 receptor antagonists prasugrel and ticagrelor will increase treatment options. An overview of systematic reviews was performed to summarize available evidence on clopidogrel. Current data on prasugrel and ticagrelor were identified by a systematic review and used for an indirect treatment comparison (ITC) of the drugs against each other and versus placebo in the absence of head-to-head clinical trials. Adjusted indirect comparison according to Bucher, Bayesian methods for mixed treatment comparisons using Winbugs, and generalized linear mixed models using SAS were employed for ITC, yielding almost identical results: prasugrel was favored regarding stent thrombosis and ticagrelor regarding major bleeding. However, substantial differences in trial design were identified, demanding caution when interpreting these results. On the basis of the obtained results, a randomized controlled trial was designed within the gap of current evidence.

Antiplatelet therapy with clopidogrel is widely used in patients with coronary artery disease, but the recent development of the new P2Y12 receptor antagonists prasugrel and ticagrelor will increase treatment options. An overview of systematic reviews was performed to summarize available evidence on clopidogrel. Current data on prasugrel and ticagrelor were identified by a systematic review and used for an indirect treatment comparison (ITC) of the drugs against each other and versus placebo in the absence of head-to-head clinical trials. Adjusted indirect comparison according to Bucher, Bayesian methods for mixed treatment comparisons using Winbugs, and generalized linear mixed models using SAS were employed for ITC, yielding almost identical results: prasugrel was favored regarding stent thrombosis and ticagrelor regarding major bleeding. However, substantial differences in trial design were identified, demanding caution when interpreting these results. On the basis of the obtained results, a randomized controlled trial was designed within the gap of current evidence.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Case Western Reserve University, 2004. / [School of Medicine] Department of Neurosciences. Includes bibliographical references. Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

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published_or_final_version / Medicine / Master / Doctor of Medicine