Pyrazolo-triazolo-pyrimidines as adenosine receptor antagonists: Effect of the N-5 bond type on the affinity and selectivity at the four adenosine receptor subtypes

In the last few years, many efforts have been made to search for potent and selective human A adenosine antagonists. In particular, one of the most promising human A adenosine receptor antagonists is represented by the pyrazolo-triazolo-pyrimidine family. This class of compounds has been strongly investigated from the point of view of structure-activity relationships. In particular, it has been observed that fundamental requisites for having both potency and selectivity at the human A adenosine receptors are the presence of a small substituent at the N position and an unsubstitued phenyl carbamoyl moiety at the N position. In this study, we report the role of the N-bond type on the affinity and selectivity at the four adenosine receptor subtypes. The observed structure-activity relationships of this class of antagonists are also exhaustively rationalized using the recently published ligand-based homology modeling approach. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007.