Identification of a Tool Compound to Study the Mechanisms of Functional Selectivity between D₂ and D₃ Dopamine Receptors

The search for synthetic selective compounds for G-protein-coupled receptors has provided a myriad of molecules with high selectivity and therapeutic potential. In some cases, however, selectivity is difficult to obtain. For instance, the selectivity ratio is relatively low for compounds acting on D₂ and D₃ dopamine receptors, which are targets of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Huntington's. From a therapeutic point of view, it is of interest the relative recent discovery of biased agonism, which is characterized by different signaling pathways engaged by different compounds acting on a given receptor. The aim of this paper was to investigate whether new piribedil-derived compounds could display higher selectivity for D₂ or D₃ receptor and/or provide biased signaling. The results show that selectivity was not different, but that one of the molecules described here, 5-((4-(pyrimidin-2-yl)piperazin-1-yl)methyl)quinolin-8-ol (10), does engage Gi-mediated signaling via D₂ or D₃ receptors, whereas it does not activate the mitogen-activated-protein kinase pathway, which is usually activated by dopamine receptor agonists.