Melatonin

Melatonin is the principal hormone secreted by the pineal gland, produced in humans with a circadian rhythm characterized by elevated blood levels during the night. It is involved in the regulation of several rhythmic functions in various vertebrates, and participates in the processing of photoperiodic information. Although its role in human physiologic and pathologic processes is not yet completely understood, MLT exerts a number of actions, in physiological or pharmacological concentrations, which could be of interest for future therapeutic uses. The mechanisms involved in MLT actions include interaction with membrane receptors, recently classified as mt1/MT2/MT3, and with nuclear sites corresponding to orphan members of the nuclear receptor superfamily, RZR/ROR; MLT also acts as a radical scavenger, exerting a protective action against various oxidative injuries. The present review is mainly addressed to the medicinal chemistry of ligands at the MLT membrane receptors, focusing on the models of binding interaction published in the literature. Several different pharmacophore and 3D-QSAR models have been reported so far, and a re-consideration of known active compounds, in the light of the recently developed biological tests on cloned receptors, could help to resolve the incongruities among these models; to this end, additional information is becoming available from new, conformationally constrained ligands, and from antagonist compounds with a selective affinity for receptor subtypes.