Virtual Screening of DPP-4 Inhibitors Using QSAR-Based Artificial Intelligence and Molecular Docking of Hit Compounds to DPP-8 and DPP-9 Enzymes
Abstract Background: Dipeptidyl Peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors are becoming an essential drug in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus, but some classes of these drugs have side effects such as joint pain that can become severe to pancreatitis. It is thought that these side effects appear related to their inhibition against enzymes DPP-8 and DPP-9. Objective: This study aims to find DPP-4 inhibitor hit compounds that are selective against the DPP-8 and DPP-9 enzymes. By building a virtual screening workflow using the Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR) method based on artificial intelligence (AI), millions of molecules from the database can be screened for the DPP-4 enzyme target with a faster time compared to other screening methods. Result: Five regression machine learning algorithms and four classification machine learning algorithms were used to build virtual screening workflows. The algorithm that qualifies for the regression QSAR model was Support Vector regression with R 2 pred 0.78, while the classification QSAR model was Random Forest with 92.21% accuracy. The virtual screening results of more than 10 million molecules from the database, obtained 2,716 hit compounds with pIC50 above 7.5. Molecular docking results of several potential hit compounds to the DPP-4, DPP-8 and DPP-9 enzymes, obtained CH0002 hit compound that has a high inhibitory potential against the DPP-4 enzyme and low inhibition of the DPP-8 and DPP-9 enzymes. Conclusion: This research was able to produce DPP-4 inhibitor hit compounds that are potential to DPP-4 and selective to DPP-8 and DPP-9 enzymes so that they can be further developed in the DPP-4 inhibitors discovery. The resulting virtual screening workflow can be applied to the discovery of hit compounds on other targets.