A receptor interaction model for phenylcarbamate local anesthetics.

We report here a molecular modeling study of selected conformationally constrained phenylcarbamate local anesthetics in relation to the available pharmacological data that enabled us to develop a receptor-interaction model for this class of drugs. The validity of the model was confirmed on other semirigid analogues prepared for this study. The results suggest that the phenyl ring is most likely involved in a stacking interaction with a complementary receptor site and the tertiary ammonium group is capable of both hydrogen bonding and lipophilic interactions.