Possible Mechanism of Action of Neurokinin-1 Receptors (NK1R) Antagonists

Recently, NK1R (Neurokinin-1 receptors) take attention as new and promising target in anticancer drug development area. It has been proved that non-peptide NK1R antagonists L-733,060, aprepitant and L-732,138 inhibited tumor growth in several cancer cell lines. For the development of novel NK1R antagonists as antitumor agents, heterocyclic compounds which were previously synthesized by our team, tested for their cytotoxic activities in several cancer cell lines in this study. Among the tested compounds, a benzothiazole derivative BSN-009 inhibited colon cancer cell lines growth by 57.53% by comparing the activity to the control drug aprepitant. Molecular modeling studies such as molecular docking and pharmacophore generation were performed with known NK1R antagonists and BSN-009 by using Discovery Studio 3.5 in order to explain their binding modes to NK1R. BSN-009 may be a good anticancer drug candidate as a possible NK1R antagonist and is worthy to carry on the anticancer studies.