Design and synthesis of N-hydroxyalkyl substituted deferiprone: a kind of iron chelating agents for Parkinson's disease chelation therapy strategy

The blood–brain barrier (BBB) permeability of molecules needs to meet stringent requirements of Lipinski’s rule, which pose a difficulty for the rational design of efficient chelating agents for Parkinson's disease chelation therapy. Therefore, the iron chelators employed N -aliphatic alcohols modification of deferiprone were reasonably designed in this work. The chelators not only meet Lipinski’s rule for BBB permeability, but also ensure the iron affinity. The results of solution thermodynamics demonstrated that the pFe 3+ value of N -hydroxyalkyl substituted deferiprone is between 19.20 and 19.36, which is comparable to that of clinical deferiprone. The results of 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging assays indicated that the N -hydroxyalkyl substituted deferiprone also possesses similar radical scavenging ability in comparison to deferiprone. Meanwhile, the Cell Counting Kit-8 assays of neuron-like rat pheochromocytoma cell-line demonstrated that the N -hydroxyalkyl substituted deferiprone exhibits extremely low cytotoxicity and excellent H 2 O 2 -induced oxidative stress protection effect. These results indicated that N -hydroxyalkyl substituted deferiprone has potential application prospects as chelating agents for Parkinson's disease chelation therapy strategy. Graphic abstract