Synthesis and biological evaluation of 4-nitroindole derivatives as 5-HT2A receptor antagonists

Abstract A novel series of 4-nitroindole sulfonamides containing a methyleneamino- N , N -dimethylformamidine were prepared. The binding of these compounds to 5-HT 2A and 5-HT 2C was evaluated, and most of the compounds showed IC 50 values of less than 1 μM, and exhibited high selectivity for the 5-HT 2C receptor. However, little selectivity was observed in the functional assay for 5-HT 6 receptors. The computational modeling studies further validated the biological results and also demonstrated a reasonable correlation between the activity of compounds and the mode of superimposition with specified pharmacophoric features.