With the objective to prepare novel non-peptidic thrombin inhibitors, bioisosteres of the inhibitory tripeptide D-Phe-Pro-Arg chain have been examined. Thus, the P1 Arg was replaced with p-amidinobenzylamine, an elongated homologue of the same and with 2,5-dichloro benzylamine. The P2-P3, D-Phe-Pro, was replaced with a novel tartaric acid template coupled to a series of readily available, mainly lipophilic, amines. Some of these compounds exhibit promising thrombin inhibition activity in vitro, IC50~5.9 µM. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

A morpholinone structural motif derived from d(+)- and l(−)-malic acid has been used as a mimic of d-Phe-Pro in the thrombin inhibiting tripeptide d-Phe-Pro-Arg. In place of Arg the more rigid P1 truncated p-amidinobenzylamine (Pab) or 2-amino-5-aminomethyl-3-methyl-pyridine have been utilized. The synthetic strategy developed readily delivers these novel thrombin inhibitors used to probe the α-thrombin inhibitor binding site. The best candidate in this series of thrombin inhibitors exhibits an in vitro IC₅₀ of 720 nM. The X-ray crystal structure of this candidate co-crystallized with α-thrombin is discussed.

With the aim to develop inhibitors of the plasmepsin I and II aspartic proteases of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, we have synthesized sets of libraries from novel reversed-statine isosteres, using a combination of solution phase and solid phase chemistry. The synthetic strategy furnishes the library compounds in good to high overall yields and with excellent stereochemical control throughout the developed route. The products were evaluated for their plasmepsin I and II inhibiting properties and were found to exhibit modest but promising activity. The best inhibitor exhibits an in vitro activity of 28% inhibition of plasmepsin II at an inhibitor concentration of 0.5 µM (Ki for Plm II=5.4 µM). © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.