Omer K. Rasheed

The Macrophage-Inducible C-type Lectin receptor (Mincle) plays a critical role in innate immune recognition and pathology, and therefore represents a promising target for vaccine adjuvants. Innovative trehalose-based Mincle agonists with improved pharmacology and potency may prove useful in the development of Th17-mediated adaptive immune responses. Herein, we report on in vitro and in silico investigations of specific Mincle ligand–receptor interactions required for the effective receptor engagement and activation of Th17-polarizing cytokines. Specifically, we employed a library of trehalose benzoate scaffolds, varying the degree of aryl lipidation and regiochemistry that produce inflammatory cytokines in a Mincle-dependent fashion. In vitro interleukin-6 (IL-6) cytokine production by human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (hPBMCs) indicated that the lipid regiochemistry is key to potency and maximum cytokine output, with the tri-substituted compounds inducing higher levels of IL-6 in hPBMCs than the di-substituted derivatives. Additionally, IL-6 production trended higher after stimulation with compounds that contained lipids ranging from five to eight carbons long, compared to shorter (below five) or longer (above eight) carbon chains, across all the substitution patterns. An analysis of the additional cytokines produced by hPBMCs revealed that compound 4d, tri-substituted and five carbons long, induced significantly greater levels of interleukin-1β (IL-1β), tumor necrosis factor- α (TNF-α), interleukin-23 (IL-23), and interferon- γ (IFN-γ) than the other compounds tested in this study. An in silico assessment of 4d highlighted the capability of this analogue to bind to the human Mincle carbohydrate recognition domain (CRD) efficiently. Together, these data highlight important structure–activity findings regarding Mincle-specific cytokine induction, generating a lead adjuvant candidate for future formulations and immunological evaluations.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) continues to be a major health threat worldwide, and the development of Mtb vaccines could play a pivotal role in the prevention and control of this devastating epidemic. Th17-mediated immunity has been implicated in disease protection correlates of immune protection against Mtb. Currently, there are no approved adjuvants capable of driving a Th17 response in a vaccine setting. Recent clinical trial results using trehalose dibehenate have demonstrated a formulation-dependant proof of concept adjuvant system CAF01 capable of inducing long-lived protection. We have discovered a new class of Th17-inducing vaccine adjuvants based on the natural product Brartemicin. We synthesized and evaluated the capacity of a library of aryl trehalose derivatives to drive immunostimulatory reresponses and evaluated the structure–activity relationships in terms of the ability to engage the Mincle receptor and induce production of innate cytokines from human and murine cells. We elaborated on the structure–activity relationship of the new scaffold and demonstrated the ability of the lead entity to induce a pro-Th17 cytokine profile from primary human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and demonstrated efficacy in generating antibodies in combination with tuberculosis antigen M72 in a mouse model.

The transition metal catalyzed direct site‐selective carbon –hydrogen functionalization is ubiquitous in organic synthesis and has reached an impressive level of sophistication and efficiency emerging as a powerful synthetic strategy for C–C bond and C–X bond formation to access various useful arylated organic molecules. For the past two decades, directing group strategy has been used for selective activation and functionalization of certain inert C–H bonds. Despite the enormous development in this field, still, the majority of systems require two redundant steps, i. e. installation and removal of DGs. To overcome these limitations, recently, traceless and multitasking groups were invented as a partial solution to DG release however installation still remains unsolved. Ideally, use of the catalytic directing group, which can be reversibly linked to the substrate and can serve as an efficient directing role would circumvent this problem and is considered as one of the most efficient and powerful strategies for the non‐activated C–H functionalization (C(sp ² )–H or C(sp ³ )–H). In this review, we describe the enormous advances in this field for direct selective C–H functionalization without involving additional steps, i. e. installation and removal of directing groups and also discuss less explored but significant non‐covalent interactions such as hydrogen bonding or ion pairing, which helps to control the selectivity of a substrate in a catalytic organic reaction.

The elaboration of azo dyes using a variety of transition-metal-catalysed reactions (Stille, Heck, Ullmann, and Suzuki couplings) is reported. This methodology has been applied to the synthesis of functionalised coumarin azo dye conjugates, substrates which may find potential application in the development of new sensors.

A ruthenium-catalyzed functionalization of benzaldehyde substrate with organic azides promoted by various transient directing groups has been developed. In this approach, C–H amination is achieved via a transient aldimine intermediate in good to excellent yields.