From Nucleic Acids to Drug Discovery: Nucleobases as Emerging Templates for Drug Candidates

Abstract

: Nucleobases represent key structural motif in biologically active molecules including synthetic and natural products. Molecular modifications made on nucleobases or their isolation from natural sources are being widely investigated for the development of drugs with improved potency for the treatment of different diseases, such as cancer, as well as viral and bacterial infections. This review article focuses on the nucleobase analogue drug developments of the past 20 years (2000-2020). Various pharmacological and medicinal aspects of nucleobases and their analogues are discussed. The current state and limitations are also highlighted.

Constructing Artificial Nucleobase Compilation to Enable Precise Molecular Medicine†

“…[ 52 ] So far, a variety of antiviral and anti‐tumor nucleoside drugs based on diverse artificial nucleobases have been developed. [ 53 ] The detailed discussion will be given in Section 3.2.1.…”

“…In addition to anti‐cancer and antiviral activities, pyrimidines derivatives have also been reported to show antibacterial activity and also show anti‐inflammatory ability. [ 53 ]…”

“…[ 105 ] Also, due to the ability IFNs to regulate immune, purine‐based NADs have also been used as a potential treatment option for cancer and other immune diseases. [ 53 ]…”

Quantum processing of cytidine derivatives and evaluating their in silico interactions with the COVID-19 main protease

“…Cytidine (Cyd) is a nucleoside derivative of cytosine nucleobase, which showed several features in medical applications [25][26][27]. Indeed, considerable attempts have been devoted to explore medical functions of nucleobases derivatives in living systems after the pioneering characterization work of Watson and Crick [28][29][30]. To this point, Cyd has been seen as a pharmaceutical compound for enzymatic activity inhibitions by earlier works [31][32][33].…”

Pd-Catalyzed Ring-Opening/Arylation/Cyclization of 2-Aminothiazole Derivatives Provides Modular Access to Isocytosine Analogues

“…“Unnatural” nucleobase derivatives have received significant attention both as probes for chemical biology and as pharmaceutical agents (Scheme A) . Isocytosine ( 1 ) is a representative example of this class of molecule, and its analogues have been used to study biological phenomena such as DNA triplex formation and RNA catalysis, and isocytosine itself forms a stable base pair with isoguanine ( 2 ), which together serve as two of the four building blocks of hachimoji RNA .…”