Novel 6-Aminoquinazolinone Derivatives as Potential Cross GT1-4 HCV NS5B Inhibitors.

Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections are a worldwide medical problem responsible for diverse types of liver diseases. The NS5B polymerase enzyme has become a very interesting target for the development of anti-HCV drugs owing to its fundamental role in viral replication. Here we report the synthesis of a novel series of 1-substituted phenyl-4(1 H )-quinazolinone and 2-methyl-1-substituted phenyl-4(1 H )-quinazolinone derivatives and evaluate their activity against HCV in HCV subgenomic replicon assays. The biological data revealed that compound 11a showed the highest activity against HCV GT1b at a micromolar concentration (EC 50 = 0.984 µM) followed by compound 11b (EC 50 = 1.38 µM). Both compounds 11a and 11b had high selectivity indices (SI = CC 50 /EC 50 ), 160.71 and 71.75, respectively, which make them very interesting candidates for further development of more potent and selective anti-HCV agents.