Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of 1-hydroxy-2-phenyl-4-pyridyl-1H-imidazole derivatives as xanthine oxidase inhibitors

In our previous study, we reported a series of 1-hydroxy-2-phenyl-1H-imidazole-5-carboxylic acid derivatives that presented excellent in vitro xanthine oxidase inhibitory potency. As a continuation study, a series of 1-hydroxy-2-phenyl-1H-imidazole derivatives containing a pyridine moiety (4a-g and 5a-g) at the 4-position was designed and synthesized. Evaluation of in vitro xanthine oxidase inhibition demonstrated that the 4a-g series was more potent than the 5a-g series. Compound 4f was the most promising derivative in the series with an IC50 value of 0.64 μM. A Lineweaver-Burk plot revealed that compound 4f acted as a mixed-type xanthine oxidase inhibitor. An iso-pentyloxy group at the 4′-position improved the inhibitory potency. More interestingly, structure-activity relationship analysis indicated that the pyridine para-N atom played a crucial role in the inhibition. Molecular modeling provided a reasonable explanation for the structure-activity relationships observed in this study. In addition, a three dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationships model which possessed reasonable statistics (q2 = 0.885 and r2 = 0.993) was conducted to further understand the structural basis of these compounds as xanthine oxidase inhibitors. These compounds, especially compound 4f, have good potential for further investigations.