scholarly journals Fragment Library of Natural Products and Compound Databases for Drug Discovery

Biomolecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana L. Chávez-Hernández ◽  
Norberto Sánchez-Cruz ◽  
José L. Medina-Franco

Natural products and semi-synthetic compounds continue to be a significant source of drug candidates for a broad range of diseases, including coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is causing the current pandemic. Besides being attractive sources of bioactive compounds for further development or optimization, natural products are excellent substrates of unique substructures for fragment-based drug discovery. To this end, fragment libraries should be incorporated into automated drug design pipelines. However, public fragment libraries based on extensive collections of natural products are still limited. Herein, we report the generation and analysis of a fragment library of natural products derived from a database with more than 400,000 compounds. We also report fragment libraries of a large food chemical database and other compound datasets of interest in drug discovery, including compound libraries relevant for COVID-19 drug discovery. The fragment libraries were characterized in terms of content and diversity.

Molecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 1030 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Maveyraud ◽  
Lionel Mourey

With the advent of structural biology in the drug discovery process, medicinal chemists gained the opportunity to use detailed structural information in order to progress screening hits into leads or drug candidates. X-ray crystallography has proven to be an invaluable tool in this respect, as it is able to provide exquisitely comprehensive structural information about the interaction of a ligand with a pharmacological target. As fragment-based drug discovery emerged in the recent years, X-ray crystallography has also become a powerful screening technology, able to provide structural information on complexes involving low-molecular weight compounds, despite weak binding affinities. Given the low numbers of compounds needed in a fragment library, compared to the hundreds of thousand usually present in drug-like compound libraries, it now becomes feasible to screen a whole fragment library using X-ray crystallography, providing a wealth of structural details that will fuel the fragment to drug process. Here, we review theoretical and practical aspects as well as the pros and cons of using X-ray crystallography in the drug discovery process.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 509-520
Author(s):  
Cauê B. Scarim ◽  
Chung M. Chin

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joelle Ngo Hanna ◽  
Boris D. Bekono ◽  
Luc C. O. Owono ◽  
Flavien A. A. Toze ◽  
James A. Mbah ◽  
...  

Abstract In the quest to know why natural products (NPs) have often been considered as privileged scaffolds for drug discovery purposes, many investigations into the differences between NPs and synthetic compounds have been carried out. Several attempts to answer this question have led to the investigation of the atomic composition, scaffolds and functional groups (FGs) of NPs, in comparison with synthetic drugs analysis. This chapter briefly describes an atomic enumeration method for chemical libraries that has been applied for the analysis of NP libraries, followed by a description of the main differences between NPs of marine and terrestrial origin in terms of their general physicochemical properties, most common scaffolds and “drug-likeness” properties. The last parts of the work describe an analysis of scaffolds and FGs common in NP libraries, focusing on huge NP databases, e.g. those in the Dictionary of Natural Products (DNP), NPs from cyanobacteria and the largest chemical class of NP – terpenoids.


Molecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (14) ◽  
pp. 3287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berin Karaman Mayack ◽  
Wolfgang Sippl ◽  
Fidele Ntie-Kang

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.


Synlett ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (04) ◽  
pp. 417-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Lee ◽  
Ashley Adams ◽  
Philip Cox ◽  
Melanie Sanford

In this Letter, we adapt a recently reported Pd-catalyzed transannular C(sp3)–H arylation of alicyclic amines for applications in fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD). We apply this method to the synthesis of a series of 6-arylated 3-azabicyclo[3.1.0]hexanes that are rule-of-three compliant fragments. Several modifications were made to the Pd-catalyzed C–H arylation method to enhance its utility in fragment synthesis. These include the use of microwave heating to shorten reaction times to under 1 h and the development of new approaches for directing group cleavage. Finally, we demonstrate that this fragment library falls within desirable physicochemical space for FBDD applications.


Proceedings ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Yun Shi ◽  
Mark von Itzstein

Fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) has become a major strategy to derive novel lead candidates for both new and established therapeutic targets, as it promises efficient exploration of chemical space by employing fragment-sized (MW 300) compounds. One of the first challenges in implementing a FBDD approach is the design of a fragment library, and more specifically, the choice of its size and individual members. In order to construct a library that maximises the chances of discovering novel chemical matter, a large number of fragments with sufficient structural diversity are often sought. However, the exact diversity of a certain collection of fragments remains elusive, which hinders direct comparisons among different selections of fragments. Building upon structural fingerprints that are commonly utilised in cheminformatics, we herein introduced quantitative measures for the structural diversity of fragment libraries. Structures of commercially available fragments were retrieved from the ZINC database and filtered by physicochemical properties, after which they were subject to selections with library sizes ranging from 100 to 100,000 compounds. The selected libraries were evaluated and compared quantitatively, resulting in interesting size-diversity relationships. Our results suggested the existence of an optimal size for structural diversity and demonstrated that such quantitative measures can guide the design of diverse fragment libraries under various circumstances


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina B. Moraes ◽  
Gesa Witt ◽  
Maria Kuzikov ◽  
Bernhard Ellinger ◽  
Theodora Calogeropoulou ◽  
...  

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1 billion people are at risk of or are affected by neglected tropical diseases. Examples of such diseases include trypanosomiasis, which causes sleeping sickness; leishmaniasis; and Chagas disease, all of which are prevalent in Africa, South America, and India. Our aim within the New Medicines for Trypanosomatidic Infections project was to use (1) synthetic and natural product libraries, (2) screening, and (3) a preclinical absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion–toxicity (ADME-Tox) profiling platform to identify compounds that can enter the trypanosomatidic drug discovery value chain. The synthetic compound libraries originated from multiple scaffolds with known antiparasitic activity and natural products from the Hypha Discovery MycoDiverse natural products library. Our focus was first to employ target-based screening to identify inhibitors of the protozoan Trypanosoma brucei pteridine reductase 1 ( TbPTR1) and second to use a Trypanosoma brucei phenotypic assay that made use of the T. brucei brucei parasite to identify compounds that inhibited cell growth and caused death. Some of the compounds underwent structure-activity relationship expansion and, when appropriate, were evaluated in a preclinical ADME-Tox assay panel. This preclinical platform has led to the identification of lead-like compounds as well as validated hits in the trypanosomatidic drug discovery value chain.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document