Interaction of Approved Drugs with Synaptic Vesicle Protein 2A

Levetiracetam (LEV) and its recently approved derivative brivaracetam are anti-epileptic drugs with a unique mechanism of action. The synaptic vesicle protein 2A (SV2A) was previously identified as their main target. In the current study, we tested a collection of 500 approved drugs for interaction with the human SV2A protein expressed in Chinese hamster ovary cells. Competition binding studies were performed using cell lysates with high SV2A expression and [3H]brivaracetam as a radioligand. A hit rate of 3% was obtained, defined as compounds that inhibited radioligand binding by more than 90% at a screening concentration of 20 μM. Subsequent concentration–inhibition curves revealed the antihistaminic prodrug loratadine (Ki = 1.16 μM) and the antimalarial drug quinine (Ki = 2.03 μM) to be the most potent SV2A protein ligands of the investigated drug library. Both compounds were similarly potent as LEV (Ki = 1.74 μM), providing structurally novel scaffolds for SV2A ligands. A pharmacophore model was established, which indicated steric and electronic conformities of brivaracetam with the new SV2A ligands, and preliminary structure–activity relationships were determined. The anti-convulsive effects of the natural product quinine may – at least in part – be explained by interaction with SV2A. Loratadine and quinine represent new lead structures for anti-epileptic drug development.