Pharmacophore guided discovery of small-molecule human apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 inhibitors

Human apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 (APE1) is an important enzyme in the base excision repair (BER) pathway that is essential for the repair of abasic sites in the genome. Evidence for APE1 as an attractive therapeutic target in anticancer drug development has been demonstrated by studies that link overexpression of APE1 in many cancers to resistance of tumor cells to radio- and chemotherapy. APE1 also shows a protective effect in several cancer cell models to a variety of DNA damaging agents. This study represents the first rational design of selective small-molecule APE1 inhibitors utilizing a three-dimensional interaction-based pharmacophore perception. All of our most potent molecules show inhibitory activity below 10 muM and are selective for APE1 inhibition.