7-Methoxytacrine-p-Anisidine Hybrids as Novel Dual Binding Site Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitors for Alzheimer’s Disease Treatment

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating progressive neurodegenerative disorder that ultimately leads to the patient’s death. Despite the fact that novel pharmacological approaches endeavoring to block the neurodegenerative process are still emerging, none of them have reached use in clinical practice yet. Thus, palliative treatment represented by acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) and memantine are still the only therapeutics used. Following the multi-target directed ligands (MTDLs) strategy, herein we describe the synthesis, biological evaluation and docking studies for novel 7-methoxytacrine-p-anisidine hybrids designed to purposely target both cholinesterases and the amyloid cascade. Indeed, the novel derivatives proved to be effective non-specific cholinesterase inhibitors showing non-competitive AChE inhibition patterns. This compounds’ behavior was confirmed in the subsequent molecular modeling studies.

Keywords

• Alzheimer’s disease
• acetylcholinesterase
• butyrylcholinesterase
• tacrine
• 7-methoxy-tacrine
• MTDLs