Deuteration for enhancing the antagonistic activity of an acyclic cucurbit[n]uril for neuromuscular blocking agents through host-guest complexation
摘要
Host-guest binding has been used to develop a universal antagonistic agent for clinically used neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBAs) by preparing ten deuterated acyclic cucurbit[n]urils (ACBs). Train-of-four test with rats reveals that, compared with the nondeuterated counterpart, tetradeuterated compound dACB-4 displays improved activity for reversing the blockade of all clinically used NMBAs, particularly cisatracurium with 43% improvement. Binding constant measurement supports that deuteration provides dACB-4 with increased binding affinity for all NMBAs. The dynamic light scattering experiment shows that, different from the nondeuterated counterpart, which undergoes strong self-aggregation, dACB-4 does not aggregate even at the high concentration of 60 mM. Density functional theory calculation illustrates that deuteration causes the acidity of the CH units to reduce by 1 pKa unit. Thus, the activity improvement of dACB-4 has been tentatively attributed to the contribution of deuteration to weaken intermolecular hydrogen bonds and thus its self-aggregation. In vitro and in vivo studies further confirm that dACB-4 also has improved biocompatibility, with general performance surpassing that of all reported ACBs.