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Choline kinase inhibition and docking studies of a series of 6-(benzylthio)-9H-purin-9-yl-pyridinium derivatives

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Abstract

Human choline kinase is a well validated target for the treatment of cancer. In the last two decades, many choline kinase inhibitors have been developed and one of them is currently under evaluation in clinical trials. In this paper a series of 6-(benzylthio)-9H-purin-9-yl-pyridinium derivatives were evaluated as choline kinase inhibitors, and their effects on cell proliferation were also investigated in the human hepatoma HepG2 cell line. The most potent inhibitor against purified choline kinase-α1 presents an IC50 value of 0.4 μM. The biological data and the docking studies described here, support that the 4-(dimethylamino)pyridinium cationic head and a small linker (benzene or biphenyl) are the essential structural parameters for choline kinase inhibition of the tested compounds.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the ‘Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa, Junta de Andalucía’ (Excellence Research Project no. P07-CTS-03210) and the ‘Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación’ (Project no. SAF2009-11955) for the financial support. The award of grants from the ‘Ministerio de Educación’ to B.R.-R. and P.R.-M. is gratefully acknowledged.

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Correspondence to Ana Conejo-García or Antonio Entrena.

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Rubio-Ruiz, B., Ríos-Marco, P., Carrasco-Jiménez, M.P. et al. Choline kinase inhibition and docking studies of a series of 6-(benzylthio)-9H-purin-9-yl-pyridinium derivatives. Med Chem Res 26, 2809–2815 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00044-017-1979-6

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