scholarly journals Complete reconstruction of the unbinding pathway of an anticancer drug by conventional unbiased molecular dynamics simulation

Author(s):  
Farzin Sohraby ◽  
Mostafa Javaheri Moghadam ◽  
Masoud Aliyar ◽  
Hassan Aryapour

AbstractUnderstanding the details of unbinding mechanism of small molecule drugs is an inseparable part of rational drug design. Reconstruction of the unbinding pathway of small molecule drugs, todays, can be achieved through molecular dynamics simulations. Nonetheless, simulating a process in which a drug unbinds from its receptor demands lots of time, mostly up to several milliseconds. This amount of time is neither reasonable nor affordable; therefore, many researchers utilize various biases that there are still many doubts about their trustworthiness. In this work we have utilized short-run simulations, replicas, to make such time-consuming process cost effective. By replicating those snapshots of the trajectories which, after careful analyses, were selected as potential candidates we increased our system’s efficiency considerably. As a matter of fact, we have implemented a sort of human bias, inspecting trajectories visually, to achieve multiple unbinding events. We would like to call this stratagem, replicating of potent snapshots, “rational sampling” as it is, in fact, benefiting from human logic. In our case, an anticancer drug, the dasatinib, completely unbounded from its target protein, c-Src kinase, in only 392.6 ns, and this was gained without applying any internal biases and potentials which can increase error level. Thus, we achieved important structural details that can alter our viewpoint as well as assist drug designers.

Biomedicines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 1197
Author(s):  
Vikas Kumar ◽  
Shraddha Parate ◽  
Gunjan Thakur ◽  
Gihwan Lee ◽  
Hyeon-Su Ro ◽  
...  

The cyclin-dependent kinase 7 (CDK7) plays a crucial role in regulating the cell cycle and RNA polymerase-based transcription. Overexpression of this kinase is linked with various cancers in humans due to its dual involvement in cell development. Furthermore, emerging evidence has revealed that inhibiting CDK7 has anti-cancer effects, driving the development of novel and more cost-effective inhibitors with enhanced selectivity for CDK7 over other CDKs. In the present investigation, a pharmacophore-based approach was utilized to identify potential hit compounds against CDK7. The generated pharmacophore models were validated and used as 3D queries to screen 55,578 natural drug-like compounds. The obtained compounds were then subjected to molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations to predict their binding mode with CDK7. The molecular dynamics simulation trajectories were subsequently used to calculate binding affinity, revealing four hits—ZINC20392430, SN00112175, SN00004718, and SN00262261—having a better binding affinity towards CDK7 than the reference inhibitors (CT7001 and THZ1). The binding mode analysis displayed hydrogen bond interactions with the hinge region residues Met94 and Glu95, DFG motif residue Asp155, ATP-binding site residues Thr96, Asp97, and Gln141, and quintessential residue outside the kinase domain, Cys312 of CDK7. The in silico selectivity of the hits was further checked by docking with CDK2, the close homolog structure of CDK7. Additionally, the detailed pharmacokinetic properties were predicted, revealing that our hits have better properties than established CDK7 inhibitors CT7001 and THZ1. Hence, we argue that proposed hits may be crucial against CDK7-related malignancies.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Jagger ◽  
Christoper T. Lee ◽  
Rommie Amaro

<p>The ranking of small molecule binders by their kinetic (kon and koff) and thermodynamic (delta G) properties can be a valuable metric for lead selection and optimization in a drug discovery campaign, as these quantities are often indicators of in vivo efficacy. Efficient and accurate predictions of these quantities can aid the in drug discovery effort, acting as a screening step. We have previously described a hybrid molecular dynamics, Brownian dynamics, and milestoning model, Simulation Enabled Estimation of Kinetic Rates (SEEKR), that can predict kon’s, koff’s, and G’s. Here we demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach for ranking a series of seven small molecule compounds for the model system, -cyclodextrin, based on predicted kon’s and koff’s. We compare our results using SEEKR to experimentally determined rates as well as rates calculated using long-timescale molecular dynamics simulations and show that SEEKR can effectively rank the compounds by koff and G with reduced computational cost. We also provide a discussion of convergence properties and sensitivities of calculations with SEEKR to establish “best practices” for its future use.</p>


Author(s):  
Toshihiro Kaneko ◽  
Kenji Yasuoka ◽  
Ayori Mitsutake ◽  
Xiao Cheng Zeng

Multicanonical molecular dynamics simulations are applied, for the first time, to study the liquid-solid and solid-solid transitions in Lennard-Jones (LJ) clusters. The transition temperatures are estimated based on the peak position in the heat capacity versus temperature curve. For LJ31, LJ58 and LJ98, our results on the solid-solid transition temperature are in good agreement with previous ones. For LJ309, the predicted liquid-solid transition temperature is also in agreement with previous result.


RSC Advances ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 5507-5515
Author(s):  
Liang Song ◽  
Feng-Qi Zhao ◽  
Si-Yu Xu ◽  
Xue-Hai Ju

The bimolecular and fused ring compounds are found in the high-temperature pyrolysis of NONA using ReaxFF molecular dynamics simulations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 890 ◽  
pp. 252-259
Author(s):  
Le Wang ◽  
Guan Cheng Jiang ◽  
Xin Lin ◽  
Xian Min Zhang ◽  
Qi Hui Jiang

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the dissociation inhibiting mechanism of lecithin for structure I hydrates. Adsorption characteristics of lecithin and PVP (poly (N-vinylpyrrolidine)) on the hydrate surfaces were performed in the NVT ensemble at temperatures of 277K and the hydrate dissociation process were simulated in the NPT ensemble at same temperature. The results show that hydrate surfaces with lecithin is more stable than the ones with PVP for the lower potential energy. The conformation of lecithin changes constantly after the balanced state is reached while the PVP molecular dose not. Lecithin molecule has interaction with lecithin nearby and hydrocarbon-chains of lecithin molecules will form a network to prevent the diffusion of water and methane molecules, which will narrow the available space for hydrate methane and water movement. Compared with PVP-hydrate simulation, analysis results (snapshots and mass density profile) of the dissociation simulations show that lecithin-hydrate dissociates more slowly.


Membranes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 355
Author(s):  
Tamar Zelovich ◽  
Mark E. Tuckerman

Fuel cell-based anion-exchange membranes (AEMs) and proton exchange membranes (PEMs) are considered to have great potential as cost-effective, clean energy conversion devices. However, a fundamental atomistic understanding of the hydroxide and hydronium diffusion mechanisms in the AEM and PEM environment is an ongoing challenge. In this work, we aim to identify the fundamental atomistic steps governing hydroxide and hydronium transport phenomena. The motivation of this work lies in the fact that elucidating the key design differences between the hydroxide and hydronium diffusion mechanisms will play an important role in the discovery and determination of key design principles for the synthesis of new membrane materials with high ion conductivity for use in emerging fuel cell technologies. To this end, ab initio molecular dynamics simulations are presented to explore hydroxide and hydronium ion solvation complexes and diffusion mechanisms in the model AEM and PEM systems at low hydration in confined environments. We find that hydroxide diffusion in AEMs is mostly vehicular, while hydronium diffusion in model PEMs is structural. Furthermore, we find that the region between each pair of cations in AEMs creates a bottleneck for hydroxide diffusion, leading to a suppression of diffusivity, while the anions in PEMs become active participants in the hydronium diffusion, suggesting that the presence of the anions in model PEMs could potentially promote hydronium diffusion.


1994 ◽  
Vol 373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger E. Stoller

AbstractA series of high-energy, up to 20 keV, displacement cascades in iron have been investigated for times up to 200 ps at 100 K using the method of molecular dynamics simulation. Thesimulations were carried out using the MOLDY code and a modified version of the many-bodyinteratomic potential developed by Finnis and Sinclair. The paper focuses on those results obtained at the highest energies, 10 and 20 keV. The results indicate that the fraction of the Frenkel pairs surviving in-cascade recombination remains fairly high in iron and that the fraction of the surviving point defects that cluster is lower than in materials such as copper. In particular, vacancy clustering appears to be inhibited in iron. Some of the interstitial clusters were observed to exhibit an unexpectedly complex, three-dimensional morphology. The observations are discussed in terms of their relevance to microstructural evolution and mechanical property changes in irradiated iron-based alloys.


Author(s):  
Jin-Liang Wang ◽  
Asif Mahmood ◽  
Ahmad Irfan

Organic solar cells are the most promising candidates for future commercialization. This goal can be quickly achieved by designing new materials and predicting their performance without experimentation to reduce the...


1988 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davy Y. Lo ◽  
Tom A. Tombrello ◽  
Mark H. Shapiro ◽  
Don E. Harrison

ABSTRACTMany-body forces obtained by the Embedded-Atom Method (EAM) [41 are incorporated into the description of low energy collisions and surface ejection processes in molecular dynamics simulations of sputtering from metal targets. Bombardments of small, single crystal Cu targets (400–500 atoms) in three different orientations ({100}, {110}, {111}) by 5 keV Ar+ ions have been simulated. The results are compared to simulations using purely pair-wise additive interactions. Significant differences in the spectra of ejected atoms are found.


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