Fragment-Based Discovery of Fenamic Acids as Pan-Species Inhibitors of the Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase Phosphatase Domain
W. Felix Zhu, Guillaume Feugray, Steffen Brunst, Hind Messaoudi, Meng Yang, Noemi Martinez-Conde, Andreas Krämer, Lilia Weizel, Johanna M. H. Ehrler, Jan S. Kramer, Astrid Kaiser, Mohammad Al-Tarrass, Tony Pereira, Manon Valet, Valéry Brunel, Manfred Schubert-Zsilavecz, Stefan Knapp, Felix F. Lillich, Victor Hernandez-Olmos, Thomas Duflot, Kerstin Hiesinger, Hongwu Qian, Anna Proschak, Jeremy Bellien, Ewgenij ProschakAbstract
Targeting the N-terminal phosphatase domain of soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) could potentially represent a pharmacological strategy for treatment of cardiometabolic diseases. However, development of chemical tools to investigate the therapeutic potential of sEH phosphatase (sEH-P) inhibition has proven challenging due to varying activities between different species isoforms and lack of selectivity toward the C-terminal hydrolase domain, which exhibits the epoxide hydrolase activity (sEH-H). Herein, we describe the fragment-based discovery of FZ581 (49), an sEH-P inhibitor against human, rat, and mouse isoforms. In vivo studies with this compound in mice and rats demonstrated a significant increase of main sEH-P substrate levels without affecting plasma levels of sEH-H substrates. Altogether, we provide a pan-species sEH-P inhibitor to study the pharmacotherapeutic potential of sEH-P inhibition.