N-Nitrosulfonamides: A new chemotype for carbonic anhydrase inhibition

A series of N(1)-substituted aromatic sulfonamides was obtained by applying a selective sulfonamide nitration synthetic strategy leading to Ar-SO2NHNO2 derivatives which were investigated as carbonic anhydrase (CA, EC 4.2.1.1) inhibitors. Two human (h) hCA isoforms, the cytosolic hCA II and the transmembrane hCA IX, in addition to the fungal enzyme from Malassezia globosa, MgCA, were included in the study. Most of the new compounds reported selectively inhibited hCA IX over hCA II and at the same time showed effective MgCA inhibitory properties, with KIs ranging between 0.22 and 8.09μM. The N-nitro sulfonamides are a new chemotype with CA inhibitory effects. As hCA IX was recently validated as antitumor/antimetastatic drug target, its selective inhibition could be exploited for interesting biomedical applications. Moreover, due to the effective MgCAs inhibitory properties of the N-nitro sulfonamides, of considerable interest in the cosmetics field as potential anti-dandruff agents, the N-nitro sulfonamides may be considered as interesting leads for the design of more efficient compounds targeting fungal enzymes.