Structure-guided design and synthesis of isoflavone analogs of GW4064 with potent lipid accumulation inhibitory activities

Abstract

Our group has previously reported a series of isoflavone derivatives with antidyslipidemic activity. With this background, a series of isoflavone analogs of GW4064 were designed, synthesized and evaluated the lipid-lowering activity of analogs. As a result, most of compounds significantly reduced the lipid accumulation in 3T3-L1 adipocytes and four of them (10a, 11, 15c and 15d) showed stronger inhibitory than GW4064. The most potent compound 15d exhibited promising agonistic activity for FXR in a cell-based luciferase reporter assay. Meanwhile, 15d up-regulated FXR, SHP and BSEP gene expression and down-regulated the mRNA expression of lipogenesis gene SREBP-1c. Besides, an improved safety profile of 15d was also observed in a HepG2 cytotoxicity assay compared with GW4064. The obtained biological results were further confirmed by a molecular docking study showing that 15d fitted well in the binding pocket of FXR and interacted with some key residues simultaneously.