Conformational analysis of piperazine and piperidine analogs of GBR 12909: stochastic approach to evaluating the effects of force fields and solvent.

Analogs of the flexible dopamine reuptake inhibitor, GBR 12909 (1), may have potential utility in the treatment of cocaine abuse. As a first step in the 3D-QSAR modeling of the dopamine transporter (DAT)/serotonin transporter (SERT) selectivity of these compounds, we carried out conformational analyses of two analogs of 1: a piperazine (2) and a related piperidine (3). Ensembles of conformers consisting of local minima on the potential energy surface of the molecule were generated in the vacuum phase and in implicit solvent by random search conformational analysis using the Tripos and MMFF94 force fields.