Nitrated and Brominated Narcotine and its Cleaved Adduct as Butyrylcholinesterase Inhibitors

Narcotine is a very antitussive agent and its modification may lead to some more biological activities. In this presented paper, narcotine (1) was first subjected to nitration and bromination to yield nitrated narcotine (2) and brominated narcotine (3). It was further made to react with phenylchloroformate (6) to give a cleaved addition product 4. This adduct 4 was further nitrated and brominated to yield substituted derivatives 5 and 6, respectively. The structure elucidation of the synthesized compounds was processed via IR, EI-MS and 1 H-NMR spectra. These were also screened against butyrylcholinesterase enzyme and were found to the moderate inhibitors of butyrylcholinesterase except nitrated product, 2, of narcotine (1).