Exploring functional cyclophellitol analogues as human retaining beta-glucosidase inhibitors

The natural product, cyclophellitol and its aziridine analogue are potent mechanism-based retaining β-glucosidase inhibitors. In this paper we explore the inhibitory potency of a number of cyclophellitol analogues against the three human retaining β-glucosidases, GBA, GBA2 and GBA3. We demonstrate that N-alkyl cyclophellitol aziridine is at least equally potent in inhibiting the enzymes evaluated as its N-acyl congener, whereas the N-sulfonyl analogue is a considerably weaker inhibitor. Our results complement the literature on the inhibitory potency of cyclophellitol analogues and hold promise for the future design of more effective activity-based retaining glycosidase probes with respect to probe stability in physiological media.