Ozonides As Drugs: What Will They Think of Next?

You know, I often think that I have too narrow a view of what kinds of structures can go into drug molecules. (That may come as worrisome statement for some past and present colleagues of mine, who feel that my tolerances are already set a bit too wide!) But I do have limits; there are some structures that I just wouldn’t make on purpose, and which I wouldn’t submit for testing even if I made them by accident.
Surely ozonides fall into this category. But when I put the “Things I Won’t Work With” stamp on them, at least as far as making them on scale and actually isolating them, some readers pointed out that people were investigating them for antimalarial activity. And here we are, with a new paper in J. Med. Chem. on their activity and properties.
Arterolane is the lead compound, which is in Phase III trials as a combination therapy. And it has to be one of the funkier structures ever to make it as far as Phase III, for sure, with both an ozonide and an adamantane in it. Those two, in fact, sort of cancel each other out – the steric hindrance of the adamantane is surely one of the things that makes the ozonide decide not to explode, as its smaller and more footloose chemical relatives would. You get blood levels of the stuff after oral dosing, a useful (although not especially long) half-life, and no show-stopping toxicity.

Endoperoxides are already known as antimalarials, thanks to the natural product arteminisin, which has led to two synthetic derivatives used as antimalarials. So the step to ozonides was, structurally, a small one, but must have been rather larger psychologically. And that’s definitely not something to discount. I probably wouldn’t have made compounds of this sort, and it’s unnerving (even to me) that arterolane has gone further into the clinic than anything I’ve ever made. I have to congratulate the people who had the imagination to pursue these things.