Synthetic studies of centromere-associated protein-E (CENP-E) inhibitors: 1.Exploration of fused bicyclic core scaffolds using electrostatic potential map

Centromere-associated protein-E (CENP-E), a mitotic kinesin that plays an important role in mitotic progression, is an attractive target for cancer therapeutic drugs. For the purpose of developing novel CENP-E inhibitors as cancer therapeutics, we investigated a fused bicyclic compound identified by high throughput screening, 4-oxo-4,5-dihydrothieno[3,4-c]pyridine-6-carboxamide 1a. Based on this scaffold, we designed inhibitors for efficient binding at the L5 site in CENP-E utilizing homology modeling as well as electrostatic potential map (EPM) analysis to enhance CENP-E inhibitory activity. This resulted in a new lead, 5-bromoimidazo[1,2-a]pyridine 7, which showed potent CENP-E enzyme inhibition (IC50: 50 nM) and cellular activity with accumulation of phosphorylated histone H3 in HeLa cells. Our homology model and EPM analysis proved to be useful tools for the rational design of CENP-E inhibitors.