Rational design of 4-aryl-1,2,3-triazoles for indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1 inhibition

Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) is an important therapeutic target for the treatment of diseases such as Cancer that involve pathological immune escape. Starting from the scaffold of our previously discovered IDO1 Inhibitor 4-phenyl-1,2,3-triazole, we used computational structure-based methods to design more potent ligands. This approach yielded highly efficient low molecular weight inhibitors, the most active being of nanomolar potency both in an enzymatic and in a cellular assay, while showing no cellular toxicity and a high selectivity for IDO1 over tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase (TDO). A quantitative structure-activity relationship based on the electrostatic ligand-protein interactions in the docked binding modes and on the quantum chemically derived charges of the triazole ring demonstrated a good explanatory power for the observed activities.