Synthesis, Biological Evaluation, and Computational Studies of Tri- and Tetracyclic Nitrogen-Bridgehead Compounds as Potent Dual-Acting AChE Inhibitors andhH3Receptor Antagonists

Abstract

Combination of AChE inhibiting and histamine H₃ receptor antagonizing properties in a single molecule might show synergistic effects to improve cognitive deficits in Alzheimer’s disease, since both pharmacological actions are able to enhance cholinergic neurotransmission in the cortex. However, whereas AChE inhibitors prevent hydrolysis of acetylcholine also peripherally, histamine H₃ antagonists will raise acetylcholine levels mostly in the brain due to predominant occurrence of the receptor in the central nervous system. In this work, we designed and synthesized two novel classes of tri- and tetracyclic nitrogen-bridgehead compounds acting as dual AChE inhibitors and histamine H₃ antagonists by combining the nitrogen-bridgehead moiety of novel AChE inhibitors with a second N-basic fragment based on the piperidinylpropoxy pharmacophore with different spacer lengths. Intensive structure–activity relationships (SARs) with regard to both biological targets led to compound 41 which showed balanced affinities as hAChE inhibitor with IC₅₀ = 33.9 nM, and hH₃R antagonism with K_i = 76.2 nM with greater than 200-fold selectivity over the other histamine receptor subtypes. Molecular docking studies were performed to explain the potent AChE inhibition of the target compounds and molecular dynamics studies to explain high affinity at the hH₃R.