1区 · 医学
Article
作者: Taslimi, Paul M. ; Deacon, Richard ; Caplan, Shari L. ; St. Denny, Irene ; Munshi, Siralee ; Vash, Brian ; Dale, Bethany A. ; Gao, Jiaping ; Stams, Travis ; Kakmak, Mesut ; Beaulieu, Valerie ; Gupta, Ramesh C. ; Schuster, Herbert F. ; Duttaroy, Alokesh ; Bebernitz, Gregory R. ; Grondine, Melissa S. ; Nadkarni, Sunil S. ; Kavana, Michael ; Kirman, Louise C. ; Liang, Jinsheng ; Maniara, Wieslawa M.
Type 2 diabetes is a polygenic disease which afflicts nearly 200 million people worldwide and is expected to increase to near epidemic levels over the next 10-15 years. Glucokinase (GK) activators are currently under investigation by a number of pharmaceutical companies with only a few reaching early clinical evaluation. A GK activator has the promise of potentially affecting both the beta-cells of the pancreas, by improving glucose sensitive insulin secretion, as well as the liver, by reducing uncontrolled glucose output and restoring post-prandial glucose uptake and storage as glycogen. Herein, we report our efforts on a sulfonamide chemotype with the aim to generate liver selective GK activators which culminated in the discovery of 3-cyclopentyl-N-(5-methoxy-thiazolo[5,4-b]pyridin-2-yl)-2-[4-(4-methyl-piperazine-1-sulfonyl)-phenyl]-propionamide (17c). This compound activated the GK enzyme (alphaK(a) = 39 nM) in vitro at low nanomolar concentrations and significantly reduced glucose levels during an oral glucose tolerance test in normal mice.