作者: Leventhal, Liza ; Nolan, Scott ; Mueller, Ralf ; Tu, Zhiming ; Vulsteke, Veerle ; Baruah, Bipul ; Patzke, Holger ; Koenig, Gerhard ; Hodgdon, Hilliary ; Sigel, Eric ; Ahlijanian, Michael ; Shapiro, Gideon ; De Strooper, Bart ; Catana, Florentina ; Nikonov, George ; Felsenstein, Kevin ; Miller, Mary Jo ; Wen, Melody ; Yang, Zhiyong ; Zhang, Mianji ; Bobrov, Sergey ; Costa, Don ; Hrdlicka, Lori ; Hopp, Sarah ; Rogers, Kathy ; Spaulding, Darcie ; Sarma, Bugga V. ; Chesworth, Richard ; Albayya, Faris ; Huang, Guangfei ; Lee, Winnie
The lowering of neurotoxic Aβ peptide production from APP (Amyloid Precursor Protein) has been the focus of multiple drug discovery efforts over the last decade for the treatment of Alzheimer′s disease (AD).The APP processing enzyme, gamma secretase (GS) is an attractive target that is particularly amenable to brain penetrant small mol. drug discovery.Direct gamma secretase inhibitors (GSIs) decrease Aβ production in animal models and humans.However, the clin. development of GSIs has been hampered by limiting side effects associated with this mechanism of action.In particular, GSIs also inhibit GS-mediated Notch processing, which results in gastrointestinal toxicity.These safety concerns have led to the discovery of gamma secretase modulators which selectively inhibit the production of the toxic Aβ42 peptide while maintaining total Aβ peptide levels and sparing Notch.A review of the SAR of a compound series which led to the discovery of EVP-14936, an orally bioavailable, CNS-penetrant GSM will be presented.