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BACKGROUND: Aromatic anesthetics exhibit a wide range of N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor inhibitory potencies and immobilizing activities. We sought to characterize the molecular basis of NMDA receptor inhibition using comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA), and compare the results to those from an equivalent model for immobilizing activity. METHODS: Published potency data for 14 compounds were supplemented with new values for 2 additional agents. The anesthetics were divided into a training set (n = 12) used to formulate the activity models and a test set (n = 4) used to independently assess the models predictive capability. The anesthetic structures were geometry optimized using ab initio quantum mechanics and aligned by field-fit minimization to provide the best correlation between the steric and electrostatic fields of the molecules and one or more lead structures. Orientations that yielded CoMFA models with the greatest predictive capability (assessed by leave-one-out cross-validation) were retained. RESULTS: The final CoMFA model for the inhibition of NR1/NR2B NMDA receptors explained 99.3% of the variance in the observed activities of the 12 training set agents (F2,9 = 661.5, P < 0.0001). The model effectively predicted inhibitory potency for the training set (cross-validated r2CV = 0.944) and 4 excluded test set compounds (predictive r2Pred = 0.966). The equivalent model for immobility in response to noxious stimuli explained 98.0% of the variance in the observed activities for the training set (F2,9 = 219.2, P < 0.0001) and exhibited adequate predictive capability for both the training set (r2CV = 0.872) and test set (r2Pred = 0.926) agents. Comparison of pharmacophoric maps showed that several key steric and electrostatic regions were common to both activity models, but differences were observed in the relative importance of these key regions with respect to the two aspects of anesthetic activity. CONCLUSIONS: The similarities in the pharmacophoric maps are consistent with NMDA receptors contributing part of the immobilizing activity of volatile aromatic anesthetics.
N-methyl-d-Aspartate (NMDA) receptors are ligand-gated cation channels involved in excitatory synaptic transmission, nociceptive pathways, learning, memory, and the modulation of muscular activity at the spinal level.1 They have been implicated as a putative site of action for inhaled general anesthetics because clinically relevant concentrations of diverse inhaled anesthetics inhibit such receptors in vitro.2–5 However, recent studies suggest that the contribution of NMDA receptor blockade to the immobilizing activities of volatile anesthetics in vivo may be restricted to aromatic compounds that are potent NMDA receptor inhibitors.5–7 Aromatic anesthetics exhibit a wide range of NMDA receptor inhibitory potencies and immobilizing activities, but the molecular features that determine the activities of this structurally homologous group are not well characterized. One approach to characterization applies molecular modeling techniques such as comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA).8 In CoMFA, the molecular structures are placed in a rectangular grid of regularly spaced lattice points. The steric and electrostatic interaction energies between the compounds and a charged probe are calculated at each grid point and correlated with potency to formulate an activity model. By measuring which grid points contribute most to the activity model, we can identify the key regions of steric and electrostatic interactions important to the activities of the compounds. These regions can be expressed as three-dimensional pharmacophoric maps. Using this method, we previously characterized the molecular bases for the immobilizing activity of IV and inhaled general anesthetics.9–11 The present study sought to identify the molecular basis for the interaction of aromatic anesthetics with NMDA receptors in vitro and to compare the resultant pharmacophoric maps with those from an equivalent model for immobilizing activity in vivo.
Potency Data Sixteen halogenated and nonhalogenated aromatic anesthetics were considered. We supplemented literature potency data for 14 compounds7,12,13 with unpublished determinations for 2 additional agents, chlorobenzene [compound 3] and ![]() ![]() -trifluorotoluene [compound 12]. The methods used to determine NMDA receptor inhibitory potency were as previously described12 and were approved by the Massachusetts General Hospital Animal Care Committee. Inhibitory potencies were expressed as IC50 values, the concentration of inhalant that reduced the peak current by one-half in human NR1/NR2B NMDA receptors expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes. NR1/NR2B NMDA receptors were used because they are more sensitive to aromatic anesthetics, such as toluene, than other NMDA receptor subunit combinations.14 The methods used to determine in vivo immobilizing activity were as in previous studies13 and were approved by the Committee on Animal Research at the University of California, San Francisco. Immobilizing activity was expressed as MAC, the minimum alveolar anesthetic concentration of inhalant required to prevent movement in 50% of rats given a noxious stimulus. The compounds were divided into a training set (n = 12), which was used to formulate the CoMFA activity models and a test set (n = 4), which was used to independently assess the models predictive capability. Preliminary comparison of NMDA-receptor IC50 and MAC data (Fig. 1) showed that the compounds could be divided into four activity clusters. One test set agent was randomly picked from each cluster.
Modeling Anesthetic structures were constructed using MacSpartan Pro (Wavefunction, CA) and geometry optimized using ab initio quantum mechanics (Hartree-Fock, 6-31G** basis set). Partial charges fitted to the electrostatic potential of the molecule were assigned to each atom. Separate CoMFA activity models were formulated for the two aspects of anesthetic activity using Sybyl 7.3 (Tripos, MO). The anesthetics were aligned for CoMFA in a reiterative process designed to minimize the differences in the steric and electrostatic interaction energy fields of the agents with those of one or more lead structures.15,16 The lead structures were high activity (potency) compounds and were used as alignment templates for the remaining anesthetics. For this study, the lead structures were the compounds in activity cluster 1 (those agents with both a high NMDA receptor inhibitory potency and high immobilizing activity, Fig. 1). The alignment process was based on the method of Kroemer and Hecht17 and consisted of two stages.
Alignment Stage 1 CoMFA activity models were formulated by placing a carbon sp3 probe atom with unitary positive charge at each of the lattice points in the grid and measuring the interaction energies between the probe atom and the aligned anesthetic molecules.8 Steric energies were calculated as a Lennard-Jones potential, which describes the attraction between molecules due to van der Waals forces (dispersion, dipole-induced dipole, and dipole-dipole interactions) and the repulsion due to steric clashes. Electrostatic interaction energies were calculated using Coulomb potentials with a distance-dependent dielectric function. Cutoffs were applied to both the steric and electrostatic interaction energies at 30 kcal/mol. The interaction energies at each lattice point were block-scaled to unit variance and correlated with either –log10(NMDA receptor IC50) or –log10(MAC) using partial least squares regression.18 The lead structure-aligned anesthetic combinations that gave CoMFA models with the greatest predictive capability, assessed by leave-one-out cross-validation,19 were retained for the second alignment stage.
Alignment Stage 2
Test Set Prediction The ability of the NMDA receptor inhibition model to predict the activities of nonaromatic cyclic compounds was investigated using an additional test set of four agents. Immobilizing activity data were not available for these additional compounds.
NMDA Inhibitory Potency Model The final CoMFA model for NMDA receptor inhibition was based on the alignment of the compounds to a single lead structure, p-xylene [compound 10]. Addition of a second lead structure was not justified as it did not significantly improve the cross-validated r2 for the model. Figure 2 shows the correlation between observed and predicted NMDA-receptor inhibitory potencies for the aromatic compounds in Table 1. The CoMFA model explained 99.3% of the variance in the observed activities of the 12 training set compounds (F2,9 = 661.47, P < 0.0001, mean residual ± sd 0.049 ± 0.033). The model has good intrinsic predictability assessed by leave-one-out cross-validation of the training set (cross-validated r2CV = 0.944) and was an effective predictor of inhibitory potencies for the 4 randomly excluded test set agents (predictive r2Pred = 0.966, mean residual ± sd 0.118 ± 0.067).
The individual partial least squares regression weightings for each lattice point in the CoMFA grid can be used to identify regions where steric and electrostatic interactions are important determinants of NMDA-receptor inhibitory activity. These regions can be visualized using isocontours to link together the lattice points where the standard deviation multiplied by the partial least squares coefficient (sd x COEFF) exceeds a threshold value. Hence, the pharmacophoric maps indicate areas where the differences in either steric or electrostatic interactions are strongly associated with changes in anesthetic activity. Figures 3A and B show the electrostatic and steric maps for NMDA-receptor inhibition. The relative contributions of the electrostatic and steric interactions to the activity model were 85.7% and 14.3%, respectively. Because of the greater contribution made by the electrostatic interactions, different isocontour thresholds were used for the electrostatic and steric maps. The electrostatic map (Fig. 3A) indicates regions where negative (red, sd x COEFF < –0.002) and positive (blue, sd x COEFF > +0.002) potential are favored for high NMDA-receptor inhibitory potency. There are two areas (regions A and B) above and below the plane of the aromatic ring where negative potential is favored for high activity (B is not visible in the view shown), and three zones (C, D, and E) where positive potential is favored. The steric map (Fig. 3B) indicates regions where molecular bulk is favored for high inhibitory potency (green, sd x COEFF > +0.001) and areas where molecular bulk is disfavored (magenta, sd x COEFF < –0.001). The dominant features of the steric map are the single zone (F) where molecular bulk is favored for high activity, and three regions (G, H, and I) where molecular bulk is disfavored (i.e., if the molecule extends into one of these regions, it will have a reduced NMDA-receptor inhibitory potency).
Immobilizing Activity Model
Comparison of Pharmacophoric Maps Despite a high level of similarity in the spatial distribution of the key regions, the relative contributions of the electrostatic and steric interactions differ between the two activity models. In the immobilizing activity model, the contributions of the total electrostatic and steric interactions are 61.4% and 38.6%, respectively, representing an increase in the importance of steric interactions compared with the NMDA-receptor inhibition model. The contributions made by each key region also reflect these differences (Fig. 5). The dominance of the electrostatic regions A, B, and D can be seen for the NMDA receptor inhibitory model, whereas the increased importance of steric interactions to immobilizing activity is reflected with the greater contribution of region F and the additional region L. The additional electrostatic region J also importantly contributes to the immobilizing activity model.
Nonaromatic Cyclic Compounds
The present article outlines the development of 2 CoMFA activity models for volatile aromatic anesthetics that describe the molecular bases of their NMDA-receptor inhibitory activities in vitro and their immobilizing activities in vivo. Both models are based on the spatial distribution of key regions where steric and electrostatic interactions are important determinants of the corresponding activities, and both models effectively predict the corresponding activities for aromatic training (n = 12) and test (n = 4) set agents. The use of a common lattice grid enables a direct comparison of the CoMFA models that show several important features for these two aspects of aromatic anesthetic activity. First, optimum alignments of the anesthetics were obtained for the NMDA receptor inhibitory potency model using a single lead structure (p-xylene). In contrast, two lead structures (p-xylene and o-xylene) were required to derive a model with comparable performance for immobilizing activity. This suggests that no single cluster 1 compound has all the steric and electrostatic molecular features that characterize the immobilizing activity of aromatic anesthetics. Hence, more than one lead structure is required to align the compounds for maximal model performance. This may simply reflect the limited range of compounds considered and studies with additional aromatic anesthetics (particularly trimethylbenzene compounds) would test this possibility. Alternatively, it may indicate that immobility is mediated by more than one site of action, with each site having a distinct alignment requirement. Second, the relative contributions of the electrostatic and steric interactions to the 2 CoMFA activity models differ. For NMDA receptor inhibition, electrostatic interactions make a much greater contribution (electrostatic: steric contribution ratio of 6.0:1). This agrees with the work of Raines et al.12 who demonstrated that NMDA-receptor inhibition potency correlates with the cation-pi energy of the molecule (represented by the negative potential favored regions A and B in our pharmacophoric maps). Although electrostatic interactions are also most important to the production of immobility, steric interactions gain in significance (electrostatic: steric ratio of 1.6:1). Third, many key regions identified in the pharmacophoric maps are common to both activity models. These include the negative potential favored regions above and below the plane of the aromatic ring (A and B), the positive potential favored regions (C, D, and E), the molecular bulk favored region (F) and the bulk disfavored regions (G and H). However, the relative importance of each key region to the two aspects of anesthesia clearly differs (Fig. 5). There are also some regional differences between the maps, with additional negative potential (J) and molecular bulk (L) favored regions appearing in the immobilizing activity model alone, and two spatial conflicts have been identified (where a favored zone in one map is associated with a disfavored zone in the other).
Do aromatic agents act at NMDA receptors to produce immobility in response to noxious stimuli? The commonalities between the CoMFA maps are consistent with NR1/NR2B NMDA receptors contributing to overall immobilizing activity. However, the combination of a low correlation between NMDA-receptor IC50 and MAC (r2 = 0.399), the different lead structures required for the optimal alignment of the anesthetics, the regional differences identified and the different contributions made by the common key regions suggest that NMDA receptors alone do not mediate immobilizing activity. Recent studies by Kelly et al.20 indicate a reciprocal relationship between the percentage inhibition of NMDA receptors at one MAC and the percentage enhancement of Although primarily designed for aromatic anesthetics, the NMDA receptor inhibition model can predict potencies for some nonaromatic cyclic compounds if they have similar electrostatic and steric profiles to the agents used to formulate the model. Weaker predictions are obtained if the molecular fields of the test compounds differ substantially from those of the training set. This is a known limitation of CoMFA, which can be overcome by the inclusion of more structurally diverse anesthetics in the training set, enabling activity predictions by interpolation rather than extrapolation.21 The nonaromatic cyclic compounds were not included in the training set for this study due to the lack of immobilizing activity data. The inclusion of additional compounds in one model, but not the other, would have prevented the direct comparison of the pharmacophoric maps for the two aspects of anesthetic activity. The pharmacophoric maps indicate the regions where steric and electrostatic interactions are important for high activity. In the case of the NMDA receptor inhibition model, the maps represent the key regions that determine inhibitory potency. These include the steric and electrostatic features that determine the interaction of the aromatic agents with the binding site of the NR1/NR2B receptors. However, the pharmacophoric maps should not be interpreted as a direct corollary of the binding site, since steric and electrostatic interactions also influence binding enthalpy through other effects, such as changes in solvation and desolvation energies. The key regions that determine the specificity of aromatic binding to NR1/NR2B receptors could be established by comparing pharmacophoric maps derived from the interactions of the anesthetics with other receptor systems. Such data are only available for a subset of the compounds considered in this study. Our study characterized the molecular bases of NMDA receptor inhibition and immobilizing activity of aromatic anesthetics in terms of the spatial distribution of key steric and electrostatic regions. Studies making use of the differences in the relative contributions of the key steric and electrostatic regions identified may inform the design of aromatic anesthetics that favor one aspect of anesthetic activity over the other.
Accepted for publication July 8, 2008. Supported by a British Journal of Anesthesia and Royal College of Anesthetists project grant (J.W.S.); Venner Capital SA (J.W.S.); NIH grant 1PO1 GM47818 UCSF (E.I.E.); PO1 GM58448 (D.E.R.). Dr. Eger is a paid consultant to Baxter Healthcare Corp. Presented, in part, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, Chicago, IL, October 2006 (Anesthesiology 2006; 105: A776). Reprints will not be available from the author.
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