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The organophosphorus nerve agents sarin, soman, cyclosarin and tabun phosphylate a tyrosine residue on albumin in human blood. These adducts may offer relatively long-lived biological markers of nerve agent exposure that do not 'age' rapidly, and which are not degraded by therapy with oximes. Sensitive methods for the detection of these adducts have been developed using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Adducts of all four nerve agents were detected in the blood of exposed guinea pigs being used in studies to improve medical countermeasures. The tyrosine adducts with soman and tabun were detected in guinea pigs receiving therapy 7 days following subcutaneous administration of five times the LD(50) dose of the respective nerve agent. VX also forms a tyrosine adduct in human blood in vitro but only at high concentrations.

Eighteen new fluorogenic analogues of organophosphorus nerve agents were synthesised and characterised. They included analogues of tabun, sarin, cyclosarin, soman, VX, and Russian VX, with the 7-oxy-4-methylcoumarin or 7-oxy-4-(trifluoromethyl)coumarin leaving group. These analogues inhibited acetylcholinesterase (AChE) effectively in vitro and therefore have potential as tools for the identification of novel organophosphatases in biological systems. Analogues of VX and Russian VX with the 7-amino-4-methylcoumarin group, although poor AChE inhibitors, may have utility for screening enzyme libraries for phosphoramidases capable of cleaving P–N bonds.

Enzymes that efficiently hydrolyze highly toxic organophosphorus nerve agents could potentially be used as medical countermeasures. As sufficiently active enzymes are currently unknown, we synthesized twelve fluorogenic analogues of organophosphorus nerve agents with the 3-chloro-7-oxy-4-methylcoumarin leaving group as probes for high-throughput enzyme screening. This set included analogues of the pesticides paraoxon, parathion, and dimefox, and the nerve agents DFP, tabun, sarin, cyclosarin, soman, VX, and Russian-VX. Data from inhibition of acetylcholinesterase, in vivo toxicity tests of a representative analogue (cyclosarin), and kinetic studies with phosphotriesterase (PTE) from Pseudomonas diminuta, and a mammalian serum paraoxonase (PON1), confirmed that the analogues mimic the parent nerve agents effectively. They are suitable tools for high-throughput screens for the directed evolution of efficient nerve agent organophosphatases.