Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) is emerging as an important new therapeutic target for the treatment of cancer, chronic viral infections, and other diseases characterized by pathological immune suppression. With the goal of developing more potent IDO inhibitors, a systematic study of 4-phenyl-imidazole (4-PI) derivatives was undertaken. Computational docking experiments guided design and synthesis efforts with analogs of 4-PI. In particular, three interactions of 4-PI analogs with IDO were studied: the active site entrance, the interior of the active site and the heme iron binding. The three most potent inhibitors (1, 17 and 18) appear to exploit interactions with C129 and S167 in the interior of the active site. All three inhibitors are approximately ten-fold more potent than 4-PI. The study represents the first example of enzyme inhibitor development with the recently reported crystal structure of IDO and offers important lessons in the search for more potent inhibitors.

Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) is emerging as an important new therapeutic target for the treatment of cancer, chronic viral infections, and other diseases characterized by pathological immune suppression. While small molecule inhibitors of IDO exist, there remains a dearth of high-potency compounds offering in vivo efficacy and clinical translational potential. In this study, we address this gap by defining a new class of naphthoquinone-based IDO inhibitors exemplified by the natural product menadione, which is shown in mouse tumor models to have similar antitumor activity to previously characterized IDO inhibitors. Genetic validation that IDO is the critical in vivo target is demonstrated using IDO-null mice. Elaboration of menadione to a pyranonaphthoquinone has yielded low nanomolar potency inhibitors, including new compounds which are the most potent reported to date (K i = 61-70 nM). Synthetic accessibility of this class will facilitate preclinical chemical-genetic studies as well as further optimization of pharmacological parameters for clinical translation.