Discovery of novel 2-(3-(2-chlorophenyl)pyrazin-2-ylthio)-N-arylacetamides as potent HIV-1 inhibitors using a structure-based bioisosterism approach.

The present work is an extension of our ongoing efforts towards the development and identification of new molecules with anti-HIV activity which have previously led to the discovery of arylazolylthioacetanilides as highly active NNRTIs. In this article, a series of 2-2-(3-(2-chlorophenyl)pyrazin-2-ylthio)-N-arylacetamide derivatives were synthesized and evaluated for in vitro anti-HIV activity. Most of the tested compounds exhibited moderate activities against wild-type HIV-1. Among them, compound 6k showed significant activity against wild-type HIV-1 with an EC(50) value of 1.7μM, along with moderate activity against wild-type reverse transcriptase (RT). The preliminary structure-activity relationship (SAR) and docking calculations of this new series of compounds were also investigated, which may help designing more potent molecules.