Development of Fluorescent Probes that Target Serotonin 5-HT_2B Receptors

Some 5-HT_2B fluorescent probes were obtained by tagging 1-(2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodophenyl)-propan-2-amine (DOI) with a subset of fluorescent amines. Some of the resulting fluorescent ligands showed excellent affinity and selectivity profiles at the 5-HT_2B receptors (e.g. 12b), while retain the agonistic functional behaviour of the model ligand (DOI). The study highlighted the most salient features of the structure-activity relationship in this series and these were substantiated by a molecular modelling study based on a receptor-driven docking model constructed on the basis of the crystal structure of the human 5-HT_2B receptor. One of the fluorescent ligands developed in this work, compound 12i, specifically labelled CHO-K1 cells expressing 5-HT_2B receptors and not parental CHO-K1 cells in a concentration-dependent manner. 12i enables imaging and quantification of specific 5-HT_2B receptor labelling in live cells by automated fluorescence microscopy as well as quantification by measurements of fluorescence intensity using a fluorescence plate reader.