Synthesis and biological evaluation of 4-fluoroproline and 4-fluoropyrrolidine-2-acetic acid derivatives as new GABA uptake inhibitors.

Preparation for the N-alkylated derivatives of enantiomerically pure (2S)-4-fluoroproline and (2S)-4-fluoropyrrolidine-2-acetic acid is described. The final compounds were evaluated as potential GAT-1 uptake inhibitors via cultured cell lines expressing mouse GAT-1. Compared with their corresponding 4-hydroxy compounds, these derivatives exhibited slight improvement on their inhibitory potency, but still much weaker than their corresponding compounds with no substituents at the C-4 of the pyrrolidine moiety, with the most potent affinity being about 1/15 fold as that of Tiagabine. The drastic decrease of their affinity may arise from sharp reduction of their basicity due to strong inductive effect of the 4-fluorine. However the configuration of the C-4 linking fluorine did not have much influence on their affinity for GAT-1.