Millions of people worldwide suffer from acute or chronic liver inflammation caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Metal ion chelators have achieved widespread success in the development of antiviral drugs. Some inhibitors with metal ion chelating structures have been proven to have good inhibitory activities on non-structural protein 5B (NS5B) polymerase. However, most of the reported metal ion chelators showed poor anti-HCV potency at the cellular level. Hence, we designed and synthesized a series of 3-hydroxyquinazoline-2,4(1
H,3
H)-dione derivatives with novel metal ion chelating structures. Typical compounds such as
21h,
21k, and
21t showed better anti-HCV activities than ribavirin with EC
50 values less than 10 μM.
21t is currently known as one of the metal ion chelators with the best anti-HCV potency (EC
50 = 2.0 μM) at the cellular level and has a better therapeutic index (TI > 25) as compared to ribavirin and the reported compound
6. In the thermal shift assay, the representative compounds
21e and
21k increased the melting temperature (
Tm) of NS5B protein solution by 1.6 °C and 2.1 °C, respectively, at the test concentration, indicating that these compounds may exert an anti-HCV effect by targeting NS5B. This speculation was also supported by our molecular docking studies and ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometry assay, in which the possibility of binding of 3-hydroxyquinazoline-2,4(1
H,3
H)-diones with Mg
2+ in the NS5B catalytic center was observed.
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