In Silico Discovery and Subsequent Characterization of Potent 4R-Tauopathy Positron Emission Tomography Radiotracers.

A chemical fingerprint search identified Z3777013540 (1-(5-(6-fluoro-1 H -indol-2-yl)pyrimidin-2-yl)piperidin-4-ol; 1 ) as a potential 4R-tau binding ligand. Binding assays in post-mortem Alzheimer's disease (AD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), and corticobasal degeneration (CBD) brain with [ 3 H] 1 provided K D (nM) values in AD = 4.0, PSP = 5.1, and CBD = 4.5. In vivo positron emission tomography (PET) imaging in rats with [ 18 F] 1 demonstrated good brain penetration and rapid clearance from normal brain tissues. A subsequent molecular similarity search using 1 as the query revealed an additional promising compound, Z4169252340 (4-(5-(6-fluoro-1 H -indol-2-yl)pyrimidin-2-yl)morpholine; 21 ). Binding assays with [ 3 H] 21 provided K D (nM) values in AD = 1.2, PSP = 1.6, and CBD = 1.7 and lower affinities for binding aggregated α-synuclein and amyloid-beta. PET imaging in rats with [ 18 F] 21 demonstrated a higher brain penetration than [ 18 F] 1 and rapid clearance from normal brain tissues. We anticipate that 1 and 21 will be useful for the identification of other potent novel 4R-tau radiotracers.