Disubstituted pyrimidine-5-carboxamide derivatives as novel HIV-1 NNRTIs: Crystallographic overlay-based molecular design, synthesis, and biological evaluation

Herein, via crystallographic overlay-based molecular hybridization strategy, a series of disubstituted pyrimidine-5-carboxamide derivatives were designed by introducing an amide moiety to the central core of the lead etravirine. All the newly synthesized compounds were evaluated for their anti-HIV-1 potencies in MT-4 cells using the MTT method. Most of the synthesized compounds displayed promising antiviral activities against the wild-type (IIIB) and a panel of HIV-1 NNRTIs-resistant strains. Especially, 21c exhibited the most potent activity (EC50 = 0.009-0.065 μM) against HIV-1 IIIB, L100I, K103N, Y181C, Y188L, and RES056, being comparable to those of etravirine. The inhibitory activity to reverse transcriptase (RT) was evaluated by ELISA method, and the target of the compounds was proved to be RT. Moreover, the molecular docking was investigated to clarify the binding mode of 21c with RT. Overall, the results demonstrated that 21c could serve as a lead for further modification to develop novel HIV-1 NNRTIs.