Improving the carbonic anhydrase inhibition profile of the sulfamoylphenyl pharmacophore by attachment of carbohydrate moieties

One of the most successful approaches for designing carbonic anhydrase (CA, EC 4.2.1.1) inhibitors was denominated 'the sugar approach'. The sugar approach consists in attaching different carbohydrates to CA inhibiting pharmacophores for modulating the physicochemical properties of these pharmacological agents. In line with this approach, in this paper, we present a new class of C-glycosides incorporating the sulfamoylphenyl moiety. These compounds have been prepared by sulfamoylation of C-glycosyl phenols, which have been synthetized by aldol reaction of glycosyl ketones with the appropriate aromatic aldehydes. The inhibition profile of the new glycomimetics was determined against four human (h) CA isozymes, comprising hCAs I and II (cytosolic, ubiquitous isozymes), hCA IV and hCA IX (tumor associated isozyme). Peracetylated and deprotected C-glycosyl sulfamates showed better inhibition selectivity compared to structurally related phenylsulfamates. In this study, deprotected compound 12 was identified as selective inhibitor of hCA IX. These results confirm that attaching carbohydrate moieties to CA sulfamoylphenyl pharmacophore improves its inhibitory activity.