Design of Biphenyl-Substituted Diarylpyrimidines with a Cyanomethyl Linker as HIV-1 NNRTIs via a Molecular Hybridization Strategy

The key problems of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) therapy are the rapid emergence of drug-resistant mutant strains and significant cumulative drug toxicities. Therefore, there is an urgent demand for new anti-HIV agents with low toxicity and broad-spectrum antiviral potency. A series of biphenyl-substituted diarylpyrimidines with a cyanomethyl linker were designed using a molecular hybridization strategy. The cell-based anti-HIV assay showed that most of the compounds exhibited moderate to good activities against wild-type HIV-1 and clinically relevant mutant strains with a more favorable toxicity, and the enzymatic assay showed they had nanomolar activity against reverse transcriptase (RT). Compound 10p exhibited the best activity against wild-type HIV-1 with an EC(50) (50% HIV-1 replication inhibitory concentration) value of 0.027 µM, an acceptable CC(50) (50% cytotoxic concentration()) value of 36.4 µM, and selectivity index of 1361, with moderate activities against the single mutants (EC(50): E138K, 0.17 µM; Y181C, 0.87 µM; K103N, 0.9 µM; L100I, 1.21 µM, respectively), and an IC(50) value of 0.059 µM against the RT enzyme, which was six-fold higher than nevirapine (NVP). The preliminary structure–activity relationship (SAR) of these new compounds was concluded. The molecular modeling predicted the binding modes of the new compounds with RT, providing molecular insight for further drug design.