Purine riboside hydration

Our next step was to assess whether the methodology used to calculate hydration free energy differences for simple carbonyl-containing compounds9 was suitable for heteroaromatic bases. Since our drug design strategy entailed analysis of purine riboside hydration, a series of azanaphthalenes was initially selected for analysis in part because of their structural similarity to purines and in part because of the extensive... 

FIGURE 16.8 (a) Phosphoglycolohydroxamate is an analog of the enediolate transition state of the yeast aldolase reaction, (b) Purine riboside, a potent inhibitor of the calf intestinal adenosine deaminase reaction, binds to adenosine deaminase as the 1,6-hydrate. The hydrated form of purine riboside is an analog of the proposed transition state for the reaction. 

Our inhibitor design strategy was based on the premise that structural modifications in the base of purine riboside that enhance purine base hydration without impairing the binding of the hydrated species to the ADA binding site would result in purine riboside (PR) analogues with high ADA inhibitory potency. Since the apparent inhibition constant (Kj (app)) is related to the hydration equilibrium constant (Keq) and the inhibitory constant for the hydrated molecule (Kj ) by... 

Figure 3. Purine riboside (PR) hydration and the effect of base modification Y.

To test whether we could accurately calculate the fold-difference of ADA inhibitory potency between purine riboside (8) and analogues of purine riboside, we selected 8-azapurine riboside (9) for our studies. Compound 9 was reported to be a 400-fold more potent ADA inhibitor relative to 8 despite differing from 8 only by the replacement of C8 with a nitrogen (Figure 8).19 The molecular reason for this enhancement in potency was not determined, but could be due either to enhanced hydration or enhanced ADA binding affinity of the hydrated species or both. To determine the reason,... 

Figure 8. Purine riboside/8-azapurine riboside and corresponding hydrates...

An alternative explanation for the 400-fold improvement in inhibitory potency exhibited by 8-azapurine riboside (9) is that the 8-aza analogue hydrates to a much larger extent than purine riboside (8). Calculation of the relative hydration free energy difference between 9-methylpurine and 8-aza-... 

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