Inhibitors of the enzymes fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) and monoacylglycerol lipase (MAGL), the principle enzymes involved in the degradation of endogenous cannabinoids like anandamide and 2-arachidonoylglycerol, have potential utility in the treatment of several disorders including pain, inflammation and anxiety. In the present study, the effectivity and selectivity of eight known FAAH and MAGL inhibitors for inhibition of the appropriate enzyme were measured applying in vitro assays, which work under comparable conditions. Because many of the known FAAH and MAGL inhibitors simply consist of a lipophilic scaffold to which a heterocyclic system is bound, furthermore, different heterocyclic structures were evaluated for their contribution to enzyme inhibition by attaching them to the same lipophilic backbone, namely 4-phenoxybenzene. One of the most active compound synthesized during this investigation was N,N-dimethyl-5-(4-phenoxyphenyl)-2H-tetrazole-2-carboxamide (16) (IC50 FAAH: 0.012 μM; IC50 MAGL: 0.028 μM). This inhibitor was systematically modified in the lipophilic 4-phenoxyphenyl region. Structure-activity relationship studies revealed that the inhibitory potency against FAAH and MAGL, respectively, could still be increased by replacement of the phenoxy residue of 16 by 3-chlorophenoxy (45) or pyrrol-1-yl groups (49). Finally, the tetrazolecarboxamide 16 and some related compounds were tested for metabolic stability with rat liver S9 fractions showing that these kind of FAAH/MAGL inhibitors are readily inactivated by cleavage of the bond between the tetrazole ring and its carboxamide substituent.
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