Design, synthesis and biological activity evaluation of a new class of 2,4-thiazolidinedione compounds as insulin enhancers

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a global disease with a high incidence of type 2 diabetes. Current studies have shown that insulin enhancers play an important role in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and have great importance in the improvement of type 2 diabetes. In this research, Rosiglitazone was taken as the lead compound, and the structure was modified by using the bioisostere principle, and a new class of 2,4-thiazolanedione compound was designed and synthesised. The novel series of compounds were studied for their biological activities in vitro and in vivo. In vitro tests, the biological activities showed that the target compounds have good selective activation of peroxisome-proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ), such as the compounds 6a, 6e, 6f, 6g and 6i, especially the compound 6e to PPARγ was EC(50) = 0.03 ± 0.01 μmol/L in vitro. Then, in vivo biological activities’ test results showed that the tendency of increasing in blood sugar had an obvious inhibiting effect, and had a significant insulin hypoglycaemic effect of enhancing and extending the exogenous. In addition, the results of cytotoxicity tests and acute toxicity tests (LD(50)) showed that these compounds belong to the low toxicity compounds.