Unveiling piperazine-quinoline hybrids as potential multi-target directed anti-Alzheimer's agents: design, synthesis and biological evaluation

Multi-target directed ligands (MTDLs) have recently been popularized due to their outstanding efficacy in combating the complicated features of Alzheimer's disease. This study details the synthesis of piperazine-quinoline-based MTDLs through a multicomponent Petasis reaction, targeting multiple factors such as AChE, BuChE, metal chelation to restore metal dyshomeostasis, and antioxidant activity. Some of the synthesized compounds exhibited notable inhibitory activity against AChE and BuChE enzymes at specific concentrations. Among the synthesized compounds compound (95) containing a 4-chloroaniline moiety and a 4-methoxybenzyl group displayed the most promising inhibitory activities against AChE (IC 3.013 µM) and BuChE (IC = 3.144 µM). Compound (83) featuring 2-methoxyaniline and 4-fluorobenzyl substituents, exhibited the highest BuChE inhibition (IC 1.888 µM). Notably, compound (79) demonstrated 93-times higher selectivity for BuChE over AChE. Molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations were also performed to explore the binding modes and stability of these compounds with the AChE amd BuChE proteins. Further, kinetics study was performed against AChE for comounds (83 and 95) which indicated mixed inhibition of the enzyme by these compounds, Amongs the synthesized compounds, nine compounds were assessed for their antioxidant activity, displaying significant antioxidant properties with IC values ranging from 156 µM to 310 µM. Moreover, all the compounds demonstrated metal chelating tendency with Cu , Zn , Fe , Fe and Al . This study provides insights into the design of novel MTDLs, highlighting compound (95) as a potential candidate for combating Alzheimer's disease.