Novel cannabidiol-carbamate hybrids as selective BuChE inhibitors: Docking-based fragment reassembly for the development of potential therapeutic agents against Alzheimer's disease

Cannabidiol (CBD) and rivastigmine have been launched as drugs for treating dementia and cholinesterases (ChEs) are ideal drug targets. This study focused on developing novel ChE inhibitors as drug leads against dementia through molecular modeling and fragment reassembly approaches. A potent carbamate fragment binding to active site gorge of BuChE was found via a docking-based structural splicing approach, thus, 17 novel compounds were designed by structural reassembly. Compound C16 was identified as a highly selective potent BuChE inhibitor (IC50 = 5.3 nM, SI > 4000), superior to CBD (IC50 = 0.67 mu M). C16 possessed BBB penetrating ability, benign safety, neuroprotection, antioxidant and pseudo-irreversible BuChE inhibition (K-d = 13 nM, k(2) = 0.26 min(-1)), showing good drug-like properties. In vivo studies confirmed that C16 significantly ameliorated the scopolamine-induced cognition impairment, almost entirely recovered the A beta(1-42) (icv)-impaired cognitive function to the normal level, showed better behavioral performance than donepezil and good anti-amyloidogenic effect. Hence, the potential BuChE inhibitor C16 can be developed as a promising disease-modifying treatment of AD. (C) 2021 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The study identified a potent novel inhibitor C16 with high selectivity for BuChE, possessing various beneficial pharmacological and drug-like properties, and demonstrated significant improvement in cognitive impairment in vivo, showing promising therapeutic effects.