Abstract

Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase (FAAH) is one of the main enzymes responsible for endocannabinoid metabolism. Inhibition of FAAH increases endogenous levels of fatty acid ethanolamides such as anandamide (AEA) and thus consitutes an indirect strategy that can be used to modulate endocannabinoid tone. In the present work, we present a three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationships/comparative molecular similarity indices analysis (3D-QSAR/CoMSIA) study on a series of 90 reported irreversible inhibitors of FAAH sharing a piperazine-carboxamide scaffold. The model obtained was extensively validated (q(2) = 0.734; r(2) = 0.966; r(m)(2) = 0.723). Finally, based on the information derived from the contour maps we designed a series of 10 new compounds with high predicted FAAH inhibition (predicted pIC(50) of the best-proposed compounds = 12.196; 12.416).