Design, Synthesis, and SAR of Naphthyl‐Substituted Diarylpyrimidines as Non‐Nucleoside Inhibitors of HIV‐1 Reverse Transcriptase

A series of 38 2-naphthyl-substituted diarylpyrimidine (DAPY) analogues, characterized by various substitution patterns on the pyrimidine and naphthalene rings, was synthesized in a straightforward fashion by means of parallel synthesis and evaluated as inhibitors of the HIV-1 wild-type and double mutant (K103N+Y181C) strains. Most of the compounds displayed strong activity against wild-type HIV-1. The most active compound, with a cyano group at position C6 on the naphthalene ring, exhibited activity against wild-type HIV-1 with an EC50 value of 0.002 microM and against the double mutant strain with an EC50 value of 0.24 microM; the selectivity index (SI) against wild-type is >180 000, the highest SI value among DAPY analogues. The structure-activity relationship (SAR) of the newly synthesized DAPYs is presented herein.