Design, synthesis and anti-HIV evaluation of novel 5-substituted diarylpyrimidine derivatives as potent HIV-1 NNRTIs

Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) are widely used in combination therapies against HIV1. As a continuation of our efforts to discover and develop "me-better" drugs of DAPYs, novel diarylpyrimidine derivatives were designed, synthesized and evaluated for their anti-HIV activities in MT-4 cells. All the compounds demonstrated strong inhibition activity against wide-type HIV-1 strain (IIIB) with EC50 values in the range of 2.5 nM similar to 0.93 mu M. Among them, compounds IVB-5-4 and IVB-5-8 were the most potent ones which showed anti-HIV-1(IIIB) activity much superior than that of Nevirapine, comparable to Efavirenz and Etravirine. What's more, some compounds also showed low nanomole activity against some mutant strains such as K103N and E138K. The selected compound IVB-5-4 was also evaluated for the activity against reverse transcriptase (RT), and exhibited submicromolar IC50 values indicating that this series compounds are specific RT inhibitors. Preliminary structure-activity relationships and modeling studies of these new analogues provide valuable avenues for future molecular optimization.