Introduction of Advanced Methods for Structure-based Drug Discovery

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilal Shaker ◽  
Kha Mong Tran ◽  
Chanjin Jung ◽  
Dokyun Na
Keyword(s):  
Drug Discovery ◽  
Pharmaceutical Industry ◽  
Virtual Screening ◽  
Molecular Basis ◽  
3D Structure ◽  
Protein Targets ◽  
Drug Candidates ◽  
Web Tools ◽  
Conventional Drug ◽  
Potent Drug

: Structure-based drug discovery has become a promising and efficient approach for identifying novel and potent drug candidates with less time and cost than conventional drug discovery approaches. It has been widely used in the pharmaceutical industry since it uses the 3D structure of biological protein targets and thereby to understand the molecular basis of diseases. For the virtual identification of drug candidates based on structure, there are a few steps for protein and compound preparations to obtain accurate results. In this review, the software and web-tools for the preparation and structure-based simulation are introduced. In addition, recent improvements in structure-based virtual screening, target library designing for virtual screening, docking, scoring, and postprocessing of top hits are also introduced.

scholarly journals Homology Modeling and Virtual Screening Studies of Antigen MLAA-42 Protein: Identification of Novel Drug Candidates against Leukemia—An In Silico Approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ihsan A. Shehadi ◽  
Huda R. M. Rashdan ◽  
Aboubakr H. Abdelmonsef
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Screening ◽  
Homology Modeling ◽  
Protein Identification ◽  
Binding Affinities ◽  
Monocytic Leukemia ◽  
Drug Candidates ◽  
Promising Target ◽  
Leukemia Treatment ◽  
Potent Drug ◽  
Novel Drug

Monocytic leukemia-associated antigen-42 (MLAA-42) is associated with excessive cell division and progression of leukemia. Thus, human MLAA-42 is considered as a promising target for designing of new lead molecules for leukemia treatment. Herein, the 3D model of the target was generated by homology modeling technique. The model was then evaluated using various cheminformatics servers. Moreover, the virtual screening studies were performed to explore the possible binding patterns of ligand molecules to MLAA’s active site pocket. Thirteen ligand molecules from the ChemBank™ database were identified as they showed good binding affinities, scaffold diversity, and preferential ADME properties which may act as potent drug candidates against leukemia. The study provides the way to identify novel therapeutics with optimal efficacy, targeting MLAA-42.

scholarly journals Natural Products as Modulators of Sirtuins

Molecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (14) ◽  
pp. 3287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berin Karaman Mayack ◽  
Wolfgang Sippl ◽  
Fidele Ntie-Kang
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Drug Discovery ◽  
Histone Deacetylases ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Chemical Space ◽  
Class Iii ◽  
Drug Candidates ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Potent Drug

Natural products have been used for the treatment of human diseases since ancient history. Over time, due to the lack of precise tools and techniques for the separation, purification, and structural elucidation of active constituents in natural resources there has been a decline in financial support and efforts in characterization of natural products. Advances in the design of chemical compounds and the understanding of their functions is of pharmacological importance for the biomedical field. However, natural products regained attention as sources of novel drug candidates upon recent developments and progress in technology. Natural compounds were shown to bear an inherent ability to bind to biomacromolecules and cover an unparalleled chemical space in comparison to most libraries used for high-throughput screening. Thus, natural products hold a great potential for the drug discovery of new scaffolds for therapeutic targets such as sirtuins. Sirtuins are Class III histone deacetylases that have been linked to many diseases such as Parkinson`s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, type II diabetes, and cancer linked to aging. In this review, we examine the revitalization of interest in natural products for drug discovery and discuss natural product modulators of sirtuins that could serve as a starting point for the development of isoform selective and highly potent drug-like compounds, as well as the potential application of naturally occurring sirtuin inhibitors in human health and those in clinical trials.

scholarly journals Recent Advances in In Silico Target Fishing

Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (17) ◽  
pp. 5124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvatore Galati ◽  
Miriana Di Stefano ◽  
Elisa Martinelli ◽  
Giulio Poli ◽  
Tiziano Tuccinardi
Keyword(s):  
Drug Discovery ◽  
In Silico ◽  
Drug Targets ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Protein Structures ◽  
Drug Repurposing ◽  
Specific Protein ◽  
Protein Targets ◽  
Drug Candidates ◽  
Target Fishing

In silico target fishing, whose aim is to identify possible protein targets for a query molecule, is an emerging approach used in drug discovery due its wide variety of applications. This strategy allows the clarification of mechanism of action and biological activities of compounds whose target is still unknown. Moreover, target fishing can be employed for the identification of off targets of drug candidates, thus recognizing and preventing their possible adverse effects. For these reasons, target fishing has increasingly become a key approach for polypharmacology, drug repurposing, and the identification of new drug targets. While experimental target fishing can be lengthy and difficult to implement, due to the plethora of interactions that may occur for a single small-molecule with different protein targets, an in silico approach can be quicker, less expensive, more efficient for specific protein structures, and thus easier to employ. Moreover, the possibility to use it in combination with docking and virtual screening studies, as well as the increasing number of web-based tools that have been recently developed, make target fishing a more appealing method for drug discovery. It is especially worth underlining the increasing implementation of machine learning in this field, both as a main target fishing approach and as a further development of already applied strategies. This review reports on the main in silico target fishing strategies, belonging to both ligand-based and receptor-based approaches, developed and applied in the last years, with a particular attention to the different web tools freely accessible by the scientific community for performing target fishing studies.

scholarly journals Drug screening using shape-based virtual screening and in vitro experimental models of cutaneous Leishmaniasis

Parasitology ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Camila Cardoso Santos ◽  
Marcos Meuser Batista ◽  
Asma Inam Ullah ◽  
Tummala Rama Krishna Reddy ◽  
Maria de Nazaré Correia Soeiro
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Screening ◽  
Cutaneous Leishmaniasis ◽  
Mucosal Damage ◽  
Peritoneal Macrophages ◽  
Experimental Models ◽  
Drug Candidates ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Potent Drug

Abstract Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is one of the most disregarded tropical neglected disease with the occurrence of self-limiting ulcers and triggering mucosal damage and stigmatizing scars, leading to huge public health problems and social negative impacts. Pentavalent antimonials are the first-line drug for CL treatment for over 70 years and present several drawbacks in terms of safety and efficacy. Thus, there is an urgent need to search for non-invasive, non-toxic and potent drug candidates for CL. In this sense, we have implemented a shape-based virtual screening approach and identified a set of 32 hit compounds. In vitro phenotypic screenings were conducted using these hit compounds to check their potential leishmanicidal effect towards Leishmania amazonensis (L. amazonensis). Two (Cp1 and Cp2) out of the 32 compounds revealed promising antiparasitic activities, exhibiting considerable potency against intracellular amastigotes present in peritoneal macrophages (IC50 values of 9.35 and 7.25 μm, respectively). Also, a sterile cidality profile was reached at 20 μm after 48 h of incubation, besides a reasonable selectivity (≈8), quite similarly to pentamidine, a diamidine still in use clinically for leishmaniasis. Cp1 with an oxazolo[4,5-b]pyridine scaffold and Cp2 with benzimidazole scaffold could be developed by lead optimization studies to enhance their leishmanicidal potency.

scholarly journals Natural Products as Modulators of Sirtuins

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berin Karaman Mayack ◽  
Wolfgang Sippl ◽  
Fidele Ntie-Kang
Keyword(s):  
Natural Products ◽  
Drug Discovery ◽  
Histone Deacetylases ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Chemical Space ◽  
Class Iii ◽  
Drug Candidates ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Potent Drug

Natural products have been used for the treatment of human diseases since ancient history. Over time, due to the lack of precise tools and techniques for the separation, purification, and structural elucidation of active constituents in natural resources there has been a decline in financial support and efforts in characterization of natural products. Advances in the design of chemical compounds and the understanding of their functions is of pharmacological importance for the biomedical field. However, natural products regained attention as sources of novel drug candidates upon recent developments and progress in technology. Natural compounds were shown to bear an inherent ability to bind to biomacromolecules and cover an unparalleled chemical space in comparison to most libraries used for high-throughput screening. Thus, natural products hold a great potential for the drug discovery of new scaffolds for therapeutic targets such as Sirtuins. Sirtuins are Class III histone deacetylases that have been linked to many diseases such as Parkinson`s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, type II diabetes, and cancer linked to aging. In this review, we examine the revitalization of interest in natural products for drug discovery and discuss natural product modulators of Sirtuins that could serve as a starting point for the development of isoform selective and highly potent drug-like compounds.

scholarly journals Leveraging nonstructural data to predict structures and affinities of protein–ligand complexes

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (51) ◽  
pp. e2112621118
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Paggi ◽  
Julia A. Belk ◽  
Scott A. Hollingsworth ◽  
Nicolas Villanueva ◽  
Alexander S. Powers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Screening ◽  
Drug Targets ◽  
3D Structure ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Rational Drug Design ◽  
Screening Methods ◽  
Pose Prediction ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Drug Candidates

Over the past five decades, tremendous effort has been devoted to computational methods for predicting properties of ligands—i.e., molecules that bind macromolecular targets. Such methods, which are critical to rational drug design, fall into two categories: physics-based methods, which directly model ligand interactions with the target given the target’s three-dimensional (3D) structure, and ligand-based methods, which predict ligand properties given experimental measurements for similar ligands. Here, we present a rigorous statistical framework to combine these two sources of information. We develop a method to predict a ligand’s pose—the 3D structure of the ligand bound to its target—that leverages a widely available source of information: a list of other ligands that are known to bind the same target but for which no 3D structure is available. This combination of physics-based and ligand-based modeling improves pose prediction accuracy across all major families of drug targets. Using the same framework, we develop a method for virtual screening of drug candidates, which outperforms standard physics-based and ligand-based virtual screening methods. Our results suggest broad opportunities to improve prediction of various ligand properties by combining diverse sources of information through customized machine-learning approaches.

Dose COVID-19 Uncovered a New Feature of Metronidazole Drug?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Seyedhamzeh ◽  
Bahareh Farasati Far ◽  
Mehdi Shafiee Ardestani ◽  
Shahrzad Javanshir ◽  
Fatemeh Aliabadi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Docking ◽  
Drug Discovery ◽  
Virtual Screening ◽  
Active Sites ◽  
Initial Plasma ◽  
New Feature ◽  
Metronidazole Benzoate ◽  
Global Health Problem ◽  
A Current ◽  
Pro Inflammatory Cytokines

Studies of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a current global health problem shown the initial plasma levels of most pro-inflammatory cytokines increased during the infection, which leads to patient countless complications. Previous studies also demonstrated that the metronidazole (MTZ) administration reduced related cytokines and improved treatment in patients. However, the effect of this drug on cytokines has not been determined. In the present study, the interaction of MTZ with cytokines was investigated using molecular docking as one of the principal methods in drug discovery and design. According to the obtained results, the IL12-metronidazole complex is more stable than other cytokines, and an increase in the surface and volume leads to prevent to bind to receptors. Moreover, ligand-based virtual screening of several libraries showed metronidazole phosphate, metronidazole benzoate, 1-[1-(2-Hydroxyethyl)-5- nitroimidazol-2-yl]-N-methylmethanimine oxide, acyclovir, and tetrahydrobiopterin (THB or BH4) like MTZ by changing the surface and volume prevents binding IL-12 to the receptor. Finally, the inhibition of the active sites of IL-12 occurred by modifying the position of the methyl and hydroxyl functional groups in MTZ. <br>

Application of Advanced Technologies in Natural Product Research: A Review with Special Emphasis on ADMET Profiling

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 751-767
Author(s):  
Pobitra Borah ◽  
Sangeeta Hazarika ◽  
Satyendra Deka ◽  
Katharigatta N. Venugopala ◽  
Anroop B. Nair ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drug Discovery ◽  
Natural Product ◽  
Dynamic Range ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Attrition Rate ◽  
Drug Candidates ◽  
Advanced Technologies ◽  
Natural Product Research ◽  
The Status ◽  
Safety Parameters

The successful conversion of natural products (NPs) into lead compounds and novel pharmacophores has emboldened the researchers to harness the drug discovery process with a lot more enthusiasm. However, forfeit of bioactive NPs resulting from an overabundance of metabolites and their wide dynamic range have created the bottleneck in NP researches. Similarly, the existence of multidimensional challenges, including the evaluation of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and safety parameters, has been a concerning issue. Advancement of technology has brought the evolution of traditional natural product researches into the computer-based assessment exhibiting pretentious remarks about their efficiency in drug discovery. The early attention to the quality of the NPs may reduce the attrition rate of drug candidates by parallel assessment of ADMET profiling. This article reviews the status, challenges, opportunities, and integration of advanced technologies in natural product research. Indeed, emphasis will be laid on the current and futuristic direction towards the application of newer technologies in early-stage ADMET profiling of bioactive moieties from the natural sources. It can be expected that combinatorial approaches in ADMET profiling will fortify the natural product-based drug discovery in the near future.

Current Approaches to Drug Discovery for Chagas Disease: Methodological Advances

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 509-520
Author(s):  
Cauê B. Scarim ◽  
Chung M. Chin
Keyword(s):  
Drug Discovery ◽  
Chagas Disease ◽  
Drug Candidates ◽  
Lead Compounds ◽  
New Drug ◽  
Compound Libraries ◽  
Screening Assays ◽  
Cruzi Infection

Background: In recent years, there has been an improvement in the in vitro and in vivo methodology for the screening of anti-chagasic compounds. Millions of compounds can now have their activity evaluated (in large compound libraries) by means of high throughput in vitro screening assays. Objective: Current approaches to drug discovery for Chagas disease. Method: This review article examines the contribution of these methodological advances in medicinal chemistry in the last four years, focusing on Trypanosoma cruzi infection, obtained from the PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases. Results: Here, we have shown that the promise is increasing each year for more lead compounds for the development of a new drug against Chagas disease. Conclusion: There is increased optimism among those working with the objective to find new drug candidates for optimal treatments against Chagas disease.

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