Discovery of potential dual-target prodrugs of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase and nucleocapsid protein 7.In the present work, we described the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of a novel series of potential dual-target prodrugs targeting the HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) and nucleocapsid protein 7 (NCp7) simultaneously.  Among them, the most effective compound 7c was found to inhibit HIV-1 wild-type (WT) strain at double-digit nanomolar concentration (EC50 = 42 nM) in MT-4 cells, and sub-micromole (EC50 = 0.308 μM) to inhibit HIV-1 NL4-3 strain in TZM-bl cells.  This is a significant improvement over the parent drug MT. In addition, it showed moderate inhibitory potency (EC50 = 1.329 μM) against the HIV-1 K103N/Y181C double mutant strain (MT-4 cells).  The metabolic stability in human plasma of compound 7c indicated that it can release the active forms of the parent drugs MT and AZT in a linear time-independent manner and turn out to be a potential prodrug.
C