Chemical studies on the chiral indanone derivatives as the inhibitor of Renilla luciferase

The bioluminescence reaction of coelenterazine involves an oxidative process. To investigate the reaction mechanism, we synthesized three mechanism-based inhibitors with an indanone core structure. The inhibitors exhibited the competitive inhibition of the Renilla luciferase reaction. The (−)-4-benzyl-2-(4-hydroxybenzyl)-2-hydroxymethyl-6-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-indan-1-one showed the significant enantio-selectivity of the inhibition and its absolute configuration was assigned as the R-configuration. These inhibitors could be useful probes to study the catalytic environment in the coelenterazine–luciferase reaction.