Inhibitory effect of novel tetrahydropyrimidine-2(1H)-thiones on melanogenesis

  • Bioorg Med Chem. 2010 Feb;18(3):1135-42. doi: 10.1016/j.bmc.2009.12.044.
P Thanigaimalai  1 ,  Ki-Cheul Lee ,  Seong-Cheol Bang ,  Jee-Hyun Lee ,  Cheong-Yong Yun ,  Eunmiri Roh ,  Bang-Yeon Hwang ,  Youngsoo Kim ,  Sang-Hun Jung
Affiliations
  • 1. College of Pharmacy and Institute of Drug Research and Development, Chungnam National University, Daejeon 305-764, Republic of Korea.
Abstract

The series of imidazoldine-2-thiones 2 and tetrahydropyrimidine-2-thiones 3 were discovered as inhibitor of alpha-MSH-induced melanin production in Melanoma B16 cells. The primary bioassay showed that 1-(4-ethylbenzyl)-tetrahydropyrimidine-2(1H)-thione 3e (>100% inhibition at 10 microM, IC(50)=1.2 microM) and 1-(4-tert-butylbenzyl)-tetrahydropyrimidine-2(1H)-thione 3f (>100% inhibition at 10 microM, IC(50)=0.76 microM) exhibited potent inhibitory effect against alpha-MSH-induced melanin production. Compounds 3 inhibit the biosynthesis of Tyrosinase without affecting its catalytic activity in melanogenesis.