scholarly journals Computationally prioritized drugs inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection and syncytia formation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Serra ◽  
Michele Fratello ◽  
Antonio Federico ◽  
Ravi Ojha ◽  
Riccardo Provenzani ◽  
...  

New affordable therapeutic protocols for COVID-19 are urgently needed despite the increasing number of effective vaccines and monoclonal antibodies. To this end, there is increasing attention towards computational methods for drug repositioning and de novo drug design. Here, we systematically integrated multiple data-driven computational approaches to perform virtual screening and prioritize candidate drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. From the set of prioritized drugs, we selected a subset of representative candidates to test in human cells. Two compounds, 7-hydroxystaurosporine and bafetinib, showed synergistic antiviral effects in our in vitro experiments, and strongly inhibited viral-induced syncytia formation. Moreover, since existing drug repositioning methods provide limited usable information for de novo drug design, we extracted and prioritized the chemical substructures of the identified drugs, providing a chemical vocabulary that may help to design new effective drugs.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Grisoni ◽  
Berend Huisman ◽  
Alexander Button ◽  
Michael Moret ◽  
Kenneth Atz ◽  
...  

<p>Automation of the molecular design-make-test-analyze cycle speeds up the identification of hit and lead compounds for drug discovery. Using deep learning for computational molecular design and a customized microfluidics platform for on-chip compound synthesis, liver X receptor (LXR) agonists were generated from scratch. The computational pipeline was tuned to explore the chemical space defined by known LXRα agonists, and to suggest structural analogs of known ligands and novel molecular cores. To further the design of lead-like molecules and ensure compatibility with automated on-chip synthesis, this chemical space was confined to the set of virtual products obtainable from 17 different one-step reactions. Overall, 25 <i>de novo</i> generated compounds were successfully synthesized in flow via formation of sulfonamide, amide bond, and ester bond. First-pass <i>in vitro</i> activity screening of the crude reaction products in hybrid Gal4 reporter gene assays revealed 17 (68%) hits, with up to 60-fold LXR activation. The batch re-synthesis, purification, and re-testing of 14 of these compounds confirmed that 12 of them were potent LXRα or LXRβ agonists. These results support the utilization of the proposed design-make-test-analyze framework as a blueprint for automated drug design with artificial intelligence and miniaturized bench-top synthesis.<b></b></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (24) ◽  
pp. eabg3338
Author(s):  
Francesca Grisoni ◽  
Berend J. H. Huisman ◽  
Alexander L. Button ◽  
Michael Moret ◽  
Kenneth Atz ◽  
...  

Automating the molecular design-make-test-analyze cycle accelerates hit and lead finding for drug discovery. Using deep learning for molecular design and a microfluidics platform for on-chip chemical synthesis, liver X receptor (LXR) agonists were generated from scratch. The computational pipeline was tuned to explore the chemical space of known LXRα agonists and generate novel molecular candidates. To ensure compatibility with automated on-chip synthesis, the chemical space was confined to the virtual products obtainable from 17 one-step reactions. Twenty-five de novo designs were successfully synthesized in flow. In vitro screening of the crude reaction products revealed 17 (68%) hits, with up to 60-fold LXR activation. The batch resynthesis, purification, and retesting of 14 of these compounds confirmed that 12 of them were potent LXR agonists. These results support the suitability of the proposed design-make-test-analyze framework as a blueprint for automated drug design with artificial intelligence and miniaturized bench-top synthesis.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Grisoni ◽  
Berend Huisman ◽  
Alexander Button ◽  
Michael Moret ◽  
Kenneth Atz ◽  
...  

<p>Automation of the molecular design-make-test-analyze cycle speeds up the identification of hit and lead compounds for drug discovery. Using deep learning for computational molecular design and a customized microfluidics platform for on-chip compound synthesis, liver X receptor (LXR) agonists were generated from scratch. The computational pipeline was tuned to explore the chemical space defined by known LXRα agonists, and to suggest structural analogs of known ligands and novel molecular cores. To further the design of lead-like molecules and ensure compatibility with automated on-chip synthesis, this chemical space was confined to the set of virtual products obtainable from 17 different one-step reactions. Overall, 25 <i>de novo</i> generated compounds were successfully synthesized in flow via formation of sulfonamide, amide bond, and ester bond. First-pass <i>in vitro</i> activity screening of the crude reaction products in hybrid Gal4 reporter gene assays revealed 17 (68%) hits, with up to 60-fold LXR activation. The batch re-synthesis, purification, and re-testing of 14 of these compounds confirmed that 12 of them were potent LXRα or LXRβ agonists. These results support the utilization of the proposed design-make-test-analyze framework as a blueprint for automated drug design with artificial intelligence and miniaturized bench-top synthesis.<b></b></p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 655-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laxmi Banjare ◽  
Sant Kumar Verma ◽  
Akhlesh Kumar Jain ◽  
Suresh Thareja

Background:Aromatase inhibitors emerged as a pivotal moiety to selectively block estrogen production, prevention and treatment of tumour growth in breast cancer. De novo drug design is an alternative approach to blind virtual screening for successful designing of the novel molecule against various therapeutic targets.Objective:In the present study, we have explored the de novo approach to design novel aromatase inhibitors.Method:The e-LEA3D, a computational-aided drug design web server was used to design novel drug-like candidates against the target aromatase. For drug-likeness ADME parameters (molecular weight, H-bond acceptors, H-bond donors, LogP and number of rotatable bonds) of designed molecules were calculated in TSAR software package, geometry optimization and energy minimization was accomplished using Chem Office. Further, molecular docking study was performed in Molegro Virtual Docker (MVD).Results:Among 17 generated molecules using the de novo pathway, 13 molecules passed the Lipinski filter pertaining to their bioavailability characteristics. De novo designed molecules with drug-likeness were further docked into the mapped active site of aromatase to scale up their affinity and binding fitness with the target. Among de novo fabricated drug like candidates (1-13), two molecules (5, 6) exhibited higher affinity with aromatase in terms of MolDock score (-150.650, -172.680 Kcal/mol, respectively) while molecule 8 showed lowest target affinity (-85.588 Kcal/mol).Conclusion:The binding patterns of lead molecules (5, 6) could be used as a pharmacophore for medicinal chemists to explore these molecules for their aromatase inhibitory potential.


2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 621-630
Author(s):  
Sowmya Ramaswamy Krishnan ◽  
Navneet Bung ◽  
Gopalakrishnan Bulusu ◽  
Arijit Roy

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serdar Durdagi ◽  
Manthos G. Papadopoulos ◽  
Panagiotis G. Zoumpoulakis ◽  
Catherine Koukoulitsa ◽  
Thomas Mavromoustakos

Author(s):  
Gisbert Schneider ◽  
Markus Hartenfeller ◽  
Ewgenij Proschak

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Priyanka Panwar ◽  
Kepa K. Burusco ◽  
Muna Abubaker ◽  
Holly Matthews ◽  
Andrey Gutnov ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Drug repositioning offers an effective alternative to de novo drug design to tackle the urgent need for novel antimalarial treatments. The antiamoebic compound emetine dihydrochloride has been identified as a potent in vitro inhibitor of the multidrug-resistant strain K1 of Plasmodium falciparum (50% inhibitory concentration [IC50], 47 nM ± 2.1 nM [mean ± standard deviation]). Dehydroemetine, a synthetic analogue of emetine dihydrochloride, has been reported to have less-cardiotoxic effects than emetine. The structures of two diastereomers of dehydroemetine were modeled on the published emetine binding site on the cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structure with PDB code 3J7A (P. falciparum 80S ribosome in complex with emetine), and it was found that (−)-R,S-dehydroemetine mimicked the bound pose of emetine more closely than did (−)-S,S-dehydroisoemetine. (−)-R,S-dehydroemetine (IC50 71.03 ± 6.1 nM) was also found to be highly potent against the multidrug-resistant K1 strain of P. falciparum compared with (−)-S,S-dehydroisoemetine (IC50, 2.07 ± 0.26 μM), which loses its potency due to the change of configuration at C-1′. In addition to its effect on the asexual erythrocytic stages of P. falciparum, the compound exhibited gametocidal properties with no cross-resistance against any of the multidrug-resistant strains tested. Drug interaction studies showed (−)-R,S-dehydroemetine to have synergistic antimalarial activity with atovaquone and proguanil. Emetine dihydrochloride and (−)-R,S-dehydroemetine failed to show any inhibition of the hERG potassium channel and displayed activity affecting the mitochondrial membrane potential, indicating a possible multimodal mechanism of action.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 791-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Fischer ◽  
Silvia Gazzola ◽  
Rainer Riedl

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