Styryl-Based and Tricyclic Compounds as Potential Anti-Prion Agents

by Erika Chung, Frances Prelli, Stephen Dealler, Woo Sirl Lee, Young-Tae Chang, Thomas Wisniewski

Prion diseases currently have no effective therapy. These illnesses affect both animal and human populations, and are characterized by the conformational change of a normal self protein PrPC (C for cellular) to a pathological and infectious conformer, PrPSc (Sc for scrapie). We used a well characterized tissue culture model of prion infection, where mouse neuroblastoma cells (N2a) were infected with 22L PrPSc, to screen compounds for anti-prion activity. In a prior study we designed a library of styryl based, potential imaging compounds which were selected for high affinity binding to Alzheimer's disease β-amyloid plaques and good blood-brain barrier permeability. In the current study we screened this library for activity in the N2a/22L tissue culture system. We also tested the anti-prion activity of two clinically used drugs, trimipramine and fluphenazine, in the N2a/22L system. These were selected based on their structural similarity to quinacrine, which was previously reported to have anti-prion activity. All the compounds were also screened for toxicity in tissue culture and their ability to disaggregate amyloid fibrils composed of PrP and β-amyloid synthetic peptides in vitro. Two of the imaging agents, 23I and 59, were found to be both effective at inhibiting prion infection in N2a/22L tissue culture and to be non-toxic. These two compounds, as well as trimipramine and fluphenazine were evaluated in vivo using wild-type CD-1 mice infecte...