Akranth Marella

A review exploring biological activities of hydrazones

The development of novel compounds, hydrazones has shown that they possess a wide variety of biological activities viz. antimicrobial, anticonvulsant, antidepressant, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antiplatelet, antimalarial, anticancer, antifungal, antitubercular, antiviral, cardio protective etc., Hydrazones/azomethines/imines possess-NHN = CH- and constitute an important class of compounds for new drug development. A number of researchers have synthesized and evaluated the biological activities of hydrazones. This review aims at highlighting the diverse biological activities of hydrazones.

Pyrazolines: A Biological Review

Pyrazoline is an important five membered nitrogen heterocycle, which has been extensively researched upon. The ring is quite stable and has inspired chemists to carry out various structural variations in the ring. This has propelled the development of distinct pyrazolines with an array of pharmacological activities viz. anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antimicrobial, anticancer, antidepressant etc. The review aims at highlighting this pharmacological diversity of pyrazolines. The review is a gist of latest work done describing the pharmacological aspects and potential of pyrazoline ring.

Piperazine scaffold: A remarkable tool in generation of diverse pharmacological agents

Piperazine is one of the most sought heterocyclics for the development of new drug candidates. This ring can be traced in a number of well established, commercially available drugs. Wide array of pharmacological activities exhibited by piperazine derivatives have made them indispensable anchors for the development of novel therapeutic agents. The review herein highlights the therapeutic significance of piperazine derivatives. Various therapeutically active piperazine derivatives developed by several chemists are reported here.

Recent Updates on Biological Activities of Oxadiazoles

Among the plethora of heterocyclic nucleus discovered, the oxadiazoles have also been explored extensively. The oxadiazole structure has been demonstrated to bear important biological activities such as anti-cancer, antiinflammatory, anti-tuberculosis, anti-malarial and anti-schistosomiasis etc. The presence of oxadiazole motifs in diverse types of compounds proves its importance in the field of medicinal chemistry. This review is complementary to earlier reviews and covers recent updates of various pharmacological aspects of oxadiazoles. To help the reader better know the context for these approaches, a summary of various aspects of background of related topic is presented.

Pharmacophore model generation and 3D-QSAR analysis of N-acyl and N-aroylpyrazolines for enzymatic and cellular B-Raf kinase inhibition

A successful 3D-QSAR study has been performed for amino-substituted N-acyl and N-aroylpyrazolines as B-Raf kinase inhibitors by means of a common five-point pharmacophore model. In this study, highly predictive 3D-QSAR models have been developed for B-Raf kinase inhibition and pERK inhibition using AADRR-2 and AADRR-6 hypothesis, respectively. The best models showed statistically outstanding values of 0.97, 0.95 and 0.91, 0.87 for r2 and q2 for AADRR-2 and AADRR-6 hypothesis, respectively. The validation of the PHASE model was done by dividing the dataset into training and test set. From the QSAR model, it can implicated that electron-withdrawing and hydrophobic groups are not advantageous for both enzymatic and cellular activities. However, H-bond donor characteristic is favorable for cellular inhibition and unfavorable for enzymatic inhibition. Based on the findings of the 3D-QSAR study, novel and promising compounds for B-Raf kinase inhibition can be synthesized.

Novel pyrazole-pyrazoline hybrids endowed with thioamide as antimalarial agents: their synthesis and 3D-QSAR studies.

Abstract One of the most viable options to tackle the growing resistance to the antimalarial drugs is hybrid molecules. It involves combination of different scaffolds in one frame that may lead to compounds with diverse biological profiles. In this context, new hybrids of three different scaffolds viz pyrazole, pyrazoline and thiosemicarbazone moiety were incorporated into one single compound and evaluated for their in vitro schizontocidal activity against the CQ-sensitive 3D7 strain of Plasmodium falciparum. Compounds with significant in vitro antimalarial activity were further evaluated for cytotoxicity against VERO cell lines. The best active compound 48 exhibited an IC50 of 1.13 µM. The in vitro results were further validated by quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR).

Malaria: Hitches and Hopes

Malaria, a devastating infectious disease caused by parasites of Plasmodium genera is transmitted from person to person through bites of infected mosquitoes. It generally traps underdeveloped nations with poor infrastructure and high population density. It has attracted considerable attention from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries and government agencies but the efforts to eradicate this threat face a number of technical, economic, financial and institutional hurdles. In the absence of clinically proven vaccines to combat malaria, chemotherapy continues to be the best available option, although it suffers from a big loophole of resistance. Emergence of resistance is associated with the two phases of Plasmodiums life cycle: asexual in humans and sexual in mosquito, which are intricate to target simultaneously. Consequently, the search for novel antimalarial agents is a never-ending task for scientists and chemists. This review aims at highlighting the currently used antimalarial agents, targets for the therapy and present scenario in the development of new antimalarial drugs to combat this global problem.