Improving the solubility and antileukemia activity of Wnt/β-catenin signaling inhibitors by disrupting molecular planarity

Leukemia cells depend on the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway for their growth. Pyrvinium, a known Wnt signaling inhibitor, has demonstrated promising efficacy in the treatment of the aggressive blast phase chronic myeloid leukemia (BP-CML). We previously developed potent inhibitors 1–2 for the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. However, the further application of these compounds as anti-leukemia agents is limited by their modest anti-leukemia activity in cells and poor aqueous solubility, due to the high molecular planarity of the chemical scaffold. Here, we reported our efforts in the synthesis and in vitro evaluation of 18 new compounds (4a-r) that have been designed to disrupt the molecular planarity of the chemical scaffold. Several compounds of the series showed significantly improved anti-leukemia activity and aqueous solubility. As a highlight, compounds 4c not only maintained excellent inhibitory potency (IC50 = 1.3 nM) for Wnt signaling but also demonstrated good anti-leukemia potency (IC50 = 0.9 µM) in the CML K562 cells. Moreover, compound 4c had an aqueous solubility of 5.9 µg/mL, which is over 50-fold enhanced compared to its parents 1–2.