Discovery of potent iminoheterocycle BACE1 inhibitors.
Caldwell, J.P., Mazzola, R.D., Durkin, J., Chen, J., Chen, X., Favreau, L., Kennedy, M., Kuvelkar, R., Lee, J., McHugh, N., McKittrick, B., Orth, P., Stamford, A., Strickland, C., Voigt, J., Wang, L., Zhang, L., Zhang, Q., Zhu, Z.(2014) Bioorg Med Chem Lett 24: 5455-5459
- PubMed: 25455483 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bmcl.2014.10.006
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
4R8Y, 4R91, 4R92, 4R93, 4R95 - PubMed Abstract: 
The synthesis of a series of iminoheterocycles and their structure-activity relationships (SAR) as inhibitors of the aspartyl protease BACE1 will be detailed. An effort to access the S3 subsite directly from the S1 subsite initially yielded compounds with sub-micromolar potency. A subset of compounds from this effort unexpectedly occupied a different binding site and displayed excellent BACE1 affinities. Select compounds from this subset acutely lowered Aβ40 levels upon subcutaneous and oral administration to rats.
Organizational Affiliation: 
Merck Research Laboratories, 2015 Galloping Hill Road, Kenilworth, NJ 07033, USA. Electronic address: john.caldwell@merck.com.