Discovery of novel dihydroimidazothiazole derivatives as p53-MDM2 protein-protein interaction inhibitors: Synthesis, biological evaluation and structure-activity relationships

Starting with Nutlins as an initial lead, we designed and generated bicyclic scaffolds aiming to place cis-bischlorophenyl moiety at the equivalent location where the hydrophobic interaction with MDM2 could be expected. As a result, we discovered novel MDM2 inhibitors possessing a dihydroimidazothiazole scaffold. Further exploration of the side chains on the dihydroimidazothiazole scaffold aided by molecular modeling resulted in compounds exhibiting almost comparable in vitro potency to Nutlin-3a. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.