Novel leucine ureido derivatives as aminopeptidase N inhibitors using click chemistry

[Display omitted] •New aminopeptidase N inhibitors have been designed and rapidly synthesized with click chemistry.•Some compounds presented sub-micromolar inhibitory activities against APN.•The best compound 13v demonstrated promising potent in vitro anti-angiogenesis activity and in vivo anti-metastasis activity. The over-expression of aminopeptidase N on diverse malignant cells is associated with the tumor angiogenesis and metastasis. In this report, one new series of leucine ureido derivatives containing the triazole moiety was designed, synthesized and evaluated as APN inhibitors. Among them, compound 13v showed the best APN inhibition with an IC50 value of 0.089 ± 0.007 μM, which was two orders of magnitude lower than that of bestatin (IC50 = 9.4 ± 0.5 μM). Compound 13v also showed dose-dependent anti-angiogenesis activities. Even at the lower concentration (10 μM), compound 13v presented similar anti-angiogenesis activity compared with bestatin at 100 μM in both the human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) capillary tube formation assay and the rat thoracic aorta rings test. Moreover, compared with bestatin, 13v exhibited comparable, if not better in vivo anti-metastasis activity in a mouse H22 pulmonary metastasis model.