Tri- and tetrasubstituted imidazoles as p38α mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors.

The synthesis of 2,4,5-trisubstituted and 1,2,4,5-tetrasubstituted imidazoles as potent p38α mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors is described. The trisubstituted imidazole series was found to be more potent than the tetrasubstituted imidazole series. Many of these compounds show low-nanomolar activities in the isolated p38α MAP kinase inhibition assay.

(2Z)-2-Fluoro-N-{4-[5-(4-fluoro-phen-yl)-2-methyl-sulfanyl-1H-imidazol-4-yl]-2-pyrid-yl}-3-phenyl-acrylamide.

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, C(24)H(18)F(2)N(4)OS, contains two crystallographically independent mol-ecules, A and B, which are linked into two chains of A and B mol-ecules by inter-molecular N-H⋯O hydrogen bonds. The three-dimensional network is stabilized by π-π inter-actions between the pyridine rings and phenyl rings of different residues, with centroid-centroid distances of 3.793 (1) and 3.