Medicinal Chemistry Conference (MedChem-2017) Book of Abstracts 27-28th November 2017 Venue: IC & SR Main Auditorium Organized by Department of Chemistry Indian Institute of Technology Madras Chennai – 600036 Message from the Conveners On behalf of the organizing committee and the Department of Chemistry IIT Madras, it is our pleasure to warmly welcome you to MedChem-2017. This is the fifth conference in the series that started in 2009 as biannual event and is part of our activities related to IITM-AztraZeneca Endowment Program for promoting education and research in the area of Medicinal Chemistry. The first conference on Current Trends in Medicinal Chemistry (then) was held in 2009. Then on, each conference had focus on specific therapeutic areas, like, Infection, Cancer and Diabetics. This year, MedChem-2017 is being organized with a focus on “Emerging Medicinal Chemistry Approaches against Neuropsychiatric and Neurodegenerative Diseases”. Considering the growing threat from Neurodegenerative Diseases that our population is exposed to, concerted drug development efforts through collaborative research need to be strengthened. An event like this would be an ideal platform to discuss the strategies ahead. We are fortunate to have fourteen eminent scientists actively working on various aspects related to the theme of the conference, which include diagnosis, structure-based drug design, as well as pharmacokinetic- and pharmacodynamics, as speakers at this conference. There will be a poster session on the first day, which primarily brings research results in Neurodegenerative Diseases and related areas as well as those from the general area of medicinal chemistry. We are sure that the lectures and poster sessions will be enlightening and this event will add two memorable days to our research life. Dr. Anbarasan P. Dr. Md. Mahiuddin Baidya Patron Chairperson Conveners Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthy Prof. Indrapal Singh Aidhen Dr. Anbarasan P. Director, IIT Madras Head, Department of Dr. Md. Mahiuddin Baidya Chemistry, IIT Madras Treasurer Dr. M. Jeganmohan Organizing Committee Dr. Arnab Rit Dr. Beeraiah Baire Dr. Debashis Chakraborty Dr. Kartik Chandra Mondal Dr. Kothandaraman Ramanujam Dr. Sundarghopal Ghosh Dr. Venkatakrishnan P. Scientific Advisory Committee Dr. Krishnamoorthy Srinivas, Chairman-Emeritus, Institute of Neurological Sciences, VHS, Chennai. Dr. Ram Vishwakarma, Director, IIIM, Jammu. Prof Javed Iqbal, Chairman, Cosmic Therapeutics, Hyderabad. Dr. Ahmed Kamal, Director, NIPER Hyderabad. Dr. Anders Johansson, AstraZeneca Gothenburg, Sweden. Dr. B. Gopalan, Orchid Pharma, Chennai. Prof. K. K. Balasubramanian, Emeritus Professor, IIT Madras. Prof. D. Karunagaran, Dept. of Biotechnology, IIT Madras. Prof. Amal Kanti Bera, Dept. of Biotechnology, IIT Madras. Prof. S. Sankararaman, Dept. of Chemistry, IIT Madras. Prof. Indrapal Singh Aidhen, Dept. of Chemistry, IIT Madras. Dr. K. M. Muraleedharan, Dept. of Chemistry, IIT Madras. Programme MedChem 2017: Programme schedule Monday, November 27, 2017 08:00 – 09:00 Registration 09:00 – 09:35 Inauguration SESSION I Chairperson: Prof. Indrapal Singh Aidhen 09:35 – 10:20 Plenary Lecture - Dr. Roland Burli, Medicinal Chemistry Neuroscience IMED Astrazeneca, Cambridge 10:20 – 10:35 Tea break SESSION II Chairperson: Prof. Mukesh Doble 10:35 – 11:05 Invited Lecture - Dr. E. S. Krishnamoorthy, Neurokrish Consulting Pvt. Ltd 11:05 – 11:35 Invited Lecture - Dr. P. Srihari, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad 11:35 – 12:05 Invited Lecture - Dr. K. P. Mohanakumar, IUCBMR, Kottayam 12:05 – 12:35 Invited Lecture - Dr. Prem N. Yadav, CSIR-CDRI, Lucknow 12:35 – 14:00 Lunch SESSION III Chairperson: Prof. G. Sekar 14:00 –14:30 Invited Lecture - Dr. Rishikesh V. Behere, KEM Hospital Research Center, Pune 14:30 –15:00 Invited Lecture - Dr. D. Srinivasa Reddy, CSIR-NCL, Pune 15:00 – 16:15 Tea break and Poster Presentation SESSION III Chairperson: Prof. G. Sekar 16:15 – 16:45 Invited Lecture - Prof. Vidita Vaidya, TIFR, Mumbai 16:45 – 17:15 Invited Lecture - Prof. Pravat K. Mandal, NBRC, Manesar 17:15 – 17:45 Concluding Remarks for the Day 19:30 – 21:00 Dinner Tuesday, November 28, 2017 SESSION I Chairperson: Prof. S. Sankararaman 09:00 – 9:30 Invited Lecture - Prof. Akshay Anand, PIMER, Chandigarh 09:30 – 10:00 Invited Lecture - Prof. Sandeep Verma, Department of Chemistry, IIT Kanpur 10:00 – 10:30 Invited Lecture - Prof. Nihar Ranjan Jana, NBRC, Manesar 10:30 – 10:45 Tea break SESSION II Chairperson: Prof. K. M. Muraleedharan 10:45 – 11:15 Invited Lecture - Prof. Amal Kanti Bera, IIT Madras, Chennai 11:15 – 11:45 Invited Lecture - Prof. Mange Ram Yadav, M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara 11:45 – 12:15 Concluding Remarks and Valedictory Function 12:15 – 14:00 Lunch Plenary Lecture (PL) PL 1 β-Secretase Inhibitors as a Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease Roland Bürli AstraZeneca, Cambridge United Kingdom E-mail: [email protected] Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects close to 50 million patients and current treatments lead at best to minor improvements of symptoms. Therapeutic approaches acting on the underlying mechanisms of the pathology have the potential to slow down disease progression, thus positively impacting the patient’s quality of life. The AD pathology is characterized by accumulation of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles which ultimately are thought to be the cause of neuronal loss. The formation of Aβ, plaque-forming peptides, initiates with cleavage of the amyloid-β protein precursor (AβPP) by β-secretase 1 (BACE1). This finding and further genetic evidence has led to a widely recognized hypothesis that inhibition of BACE1 may lead to slowing AD disease progression and has spurred significant efforts in the Industry to develop brain-permeable BACE1 inhibitors. The active site of BACE1 presents a relatively open and hydrophilic pocket and as a result, it has been challenging to combine the properties required for good brain permeability with high affinity for BACE1. At AstraZeneca, a large effort has culminated in the identification of Ianabecestat (AZD3293), a BACE inhibitor with good brain permeability and potency, which is now being investigated in Phase III clinical trials in collaboration with Eli Lilly. The properties of Ianabecestat and key parameters leading to its discovery will be discussed. Notably, there are two isoforms of β-secretase, namely BACE1 and BACE2. Whereas BACE1 has been extensively investigated in the context of AD research, until a few years ago less was known about the biological role of BACE2. It has been shown that BACE2 plays an important part in processing the pigment cell-specific melanocyte protein PMEL and ablation of BACE2 therefore can result in partial hypopigmentation in preclinical species. The implications of this finding are being explored in clinical trials. In an initiative to reduce potential off-target effects, we analyzed the internal crystal structures and biological data of both forms of BACE to form a structural hypothesis to identify BACE1-selective inhibitors. Invited Lecture (IL) IL 1 Epilepsy : From Symptoms to Substrate Prof. (Dr.) Ennapadam S Krishnamoorthy1*; Vivek Misra2 1Founder; 2Research Associate, Neurokrish – the neuropsychiatry centre E-mail: [email protected] Epilepsy is the condition with recurrent seizures, relatively common neurological disorder affecting 50 million people worldwide. A multitude of etiologies cause epilepsy, including tumors, developmental abnormalities, febrile illness, trauma, or infection. However, in 2/3 of the cases, the cause is unknown. Traditionally, scalp electroencephalography (SEEG) and often invasive (subdural grid or depth electrode) EEG are used to identify the epileptogenic regions of the brain, but increasingly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), ictal single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and more recently, Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) been used as standard Epilepsy imaging protocol Studies demonstrated that there may be a differential role for the amygdala, hippocampus and possibly other temporal structures, in the development and/or the expression of psychopathology. This finding highlights an interesting trend with regard to affective illness in MRI volumetry studies—namely, preservation or even increase in amygdala volumes with the non- schizophreniform psychosis, particularly affective psychosis. This trend is particularly interesting given that hippocampal sclerosis has been reported consistently in unipolar major depression, leading to experts terming it the region of interest in imaging studies. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), also known as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, is a non-invasive, ionizing-radiation-free analytical technique that has been used to study metabolic changes in patients with epilepsy to screen for metabolic derangements such as inborn errors of metabolism. Focusing upon Hippocampus / amygdala complex, decreases in N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) as seen by proton MR spectroscopy are found in hippocampal sclerosis, and elevated levels of lipids/lactate have been observed in the patients with acute seizures. Such information plays a crucial role in management as lipids/lactate may be a sensitive marker for acute temporal lobe seizures. Further, Proton MR spectroscopy has been shown to be useful in the preoperative evaluation of patients with temporal lobe seizures. Specifically, proton MR spectroscopy may help to identify the epileptogenic hippocampi by showing