Virtual Screening Yields Inhibitors of Novel Antifungal Drug Target, Benzoate 4-Monooxygenase

2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (11) ◽  
pp. 3053-3063 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabina Berne ◽  
Barbara Podobnik ◽  
Neja Zupanec ◽  
Metka Novak ◽  
Nada Kraševec ◽  
...  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-426
Author(s):  
Vimee Raturi ◽  
Kumar Abhishek ◽  
Subhashis Jana ◽  
Subhendu Sekhar Bag ◽  
Vishal Trivedi

Background: Malaria Parasite relies heavily on signal transduction pathways to control growth, the progression of the life cycle and sustaining stress for its survival. Unlike kinases, Plasmodium's phosphatome is one of the smallest and least explored for identifying drug target for clinical intervention. PF14_0660 is a putative protein present on the chromosome 14 of Plasmodium falciparum genome. Methods: Multiple sequence alignment of PF14_0660 with other known protein phosphatase indicate the presence of phosphatase motif with specific residues essential for metal binding, catalysis and providing structural stability. PF14_0660 is a mixed α/β type of protein with several β -sheet and α-helix arranged to form βαβαβα sub-structure. The surface properties of PF14_0660 is conserved with another phosphate of this family, but it profoundly diverges from the host protein tyrosine phosphatase. PF14_0660 was cloned, over-expressed and protein is exhibiting phosphatase activity in a dose-dependent manner. Docking of Heterocyclic compounds from chemical libraries into the PF14_0660 active site found nice fitting of several candidate molecules. Results: Compound PPinh6, PPinh 7 and PPinh 5 are exhibiting antimalarial activity with an IC50 of 1.4 ± 0.2µM, 3.8 ± 0.3 µM and 9.4 ± 0.6&#181M respectively. Compound PPinh 6 and PPinh 7 are inhibiting intracellular PF14_0660 phosphatase activity and killing parasite through the generation of reactive oxygen species. Conclusion: Hence, a combination of molecular modelling, virtual screening and biochemical study allowed us to explore the potentials of PF14_0660 as a drug target to design anti-malarials.


Author(s):  
Fahad Hassan Shah ◽  
Song Ja Kim

Background: Fibroleukin-2 protein (FGL2) causes redevelopment of brain tumors. Inhibition of these proteins has shown to improve glioblastoma prognosis and treatment efficacy. Aim: The current study gathered recently exploited natural compounds that suppress glioblastoma proliferation in vitro, tested against FGL2 protein. Method: Twenty-five compounds were explored through a virtual screening platform. Results: Three natural compounds (betanine, hesperetin and ovatodiolide) hit the active site of FGL2. Furthermore, the influence of these compounds was also assessed using in silico gene expression, and ADMET tools showed downregulation of some genes, which caused rapid tumor development while possessing a moderate acute toxicity and pharmacokinetic profile. Conclusion: Our study presents three compounds that are good candidates for evaluation in FGL2 mutated glioblastoma animal models.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zengrui Wu ◽  
Hui Ma ◽  
Zehui Liu ◽  
Lulu Zheng ◽  
Zhuohang Yu ◽  
...  

In recent years, the rapid development of network-based methods for the prediction of drug-target interactions (DTIs) provides an opportunity for the emergence of a new type of virtual screening (VS),...


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dibakar Goswami ◽  
Mukesh Kumar ◽  
Sunil K. Ghosh ◽  
Amit Das

SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 has caused more than 10,00,000 infections and ~55,000 deaths worldwide spanning over 203 countries, and the numbers are exponentially increasing. Due to urgent need of treating the SARS infection, many approved, pre-clinical, anti-viral, anti-malarial and anti-SARS drugs are being administered to patients. SARS-CoV-2 papain-like protease (PLpro) has a protease domain which cleaves the viral polyproteins a/b, necessary for its survival and replication, and is one of the drug target against SARS-CoV-2. 3D structures of SARS-CoV-2 PLpro were built by homology modelling. Two models having partially open and closed conformations were used in our study. Virtual screening of natural product compounds was performed. We prepared an in house library of compounds found in rhizomes, Alpinia officinarum, ginger and curcuma, and docked them into the solvent accessible S3-S4 pocket of PLpro. Eight compounds from Alpinia officinarum and ginger bind with high in silico affinity to closed PLpro conformer, and hence are potential SARS-CoV-2 PLpro inhibitors. Our study reveal new lead compounds targeting SARS-CoV-2. Further structure based modifications or extract formulations of these compounds can lead to highly potent inhibitors to treat SARS-CoV-2 infections.<br>


Author(s):  
Dibakar Goswami ◽  
Mukesh Kumar ◽  
Sunil K. Ghosh ◽  
Amit Das

SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 has caused more than 10,00,000 infections and ~55,000 deaths worldwide spanning over 203 countries, and the numbers are exponentially increasing. Due to urgent need of treating the SARS infection, many approved, pre-clinical, anti-viral, anti-malarial and anti-SARS drugs are being administered to patients. SARS-CoV-2 papain-like protease (PLpro) has a protease domain which cleaves the viral polyproteins a/b, necessary for its survival and replication, and is one of the drug target against SARS-CoV-2. 3D structures of SARS-CoV-2 PLpro were built by homology modelling. Two models having partially open and closed conformations were used in our study. Virtual screening of natural product compounds was performed. We prepared an in house library of compounds found in rhizomes, Alpinia officinarum, ginger and curcuma, and docked them into the solvent accessible S3-S4 pocket of PLpro. Eight compounds from Alpinia officinarum and ginger bind with high in silico affinity to closed PLpro conformer, and hence are potential SARS-CoV-2 PLpro inhibitors. Our study reveal new lead compounds targeting SARS-CoV-2. Further structure based modifications or extract formulations of these compounds can lead to highly potent inhibitors to treat SARS-CoV-2 infections.<br>


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (8) ◽  
pp. 1027-1035
Author(s):  
Reaz Uddin ◽  
Bushra Siraj ◽  
Sidra Rafi ◽  
Syed Sikander Azam ◽  
Abdul Wadood

Background: Aminoglycoside 6'-N-acetyltransferase type Ib (AAC(6')-Ib) from Klebsiella pneumoniae is an established drug target and has conferred insensitivity to aminoglycosides. Aminoglycosides are often inactivated by aminoglycoside modifying enzymes encoded by genes present in the chromosome, plasmids, and other genetic elements. The AAC(6′)- Ib is an enzyme of clinical importance found in a wide variety of gram-negative pathogens. The AAC(6′)-Ib enzyme is of interest not only because of its ubiquity but also because of other characteristics e.g., it presents significant microheterogeneity at the N-termini and the aac(6′)-Ib gene is often present in integrons, transposons, plasmids, genomic islands, and other genetic structures. The majority of the reported potent inhibitors against the target are substrate analogs. Therefore, there is a need to develop or discover new scaffolds other than substrate analogs as AAC(6')-Ib inhibitor. Objective: The objective of this study is to set optimum parameters for the structure-based virtual screening by multiple docking and scoring methods. The multiple scoring of each ligand also incorporates the ‘Induced Fit’ docking effect that helps to build further confidence in the shortlisted compounds. The method eventually is able to predict the potential inhibitors that bind to the active site and can potentially inhibit the activity of the Aminoglycoside 6′-N-acetyltransferase type Ib [AAC(6’)-Ib] from Klebsiella pneumoniae. Methods: Using the available three-dimensional structure of enzyme AAC(6')-Ib inhibitor complex, a structure-based virtual screening was performed with the hope of prioritizing the promising leads. In order to set up the protocol, 30,000 drug-like molecules were selected from the ChemBridge library. Multiple docking programs, i.e. UCSF DOCK6 and AutoDock Vina have been applied in the current study so that a consensus is developed to the predicted binding modes and thus the docking accuracy. The Amber scores of the Dock6 – a secondary scoring function was also used to perform the ‘Induced Fit’ effect and correspondingly re-rank the compounds. Results: The top 30 ranked compounds of the most frequent scored were selected from the histogram. The 2D interactions of those 30 compounds were drawn from the Ligplot+ tool. Six of the compounds were prioritized as potential inhibitors as they are representing the maximum number of interactions from the rest of the compounds and also possess the drug-likeness as predicted by the estimated ADMET properties. Conclusion: This study provided useful insight that the proposed compounds have the potential to bind to the aminoglycoside binding site of AAC(6′)-Ib that may eventually inhibit the Klebsiella pneumoniae. This study has the potential to propose putative new and novel inhibitors against a resistant drug target of Klebsiella pneumoniae.


Author(s):  
Rahul Chandela ◽  
Dhananjay Jade ◽  
Surender Mohan ◽  
Sugumar Shobana ◽  
Ridhi Sharma

Background: Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is a multi-drug resistant, gram-negative bacterium that causes opportunistic infections and is associated with high morbidity and mortality in severely immunocompromised individuals. Aim: To find out the drug target and a novel inhibitor for Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. Objectives: Current study focused on the identification of specific drug target by subtractive genomes analysis and to find out the novel inhibitor for the identified target protein by virtual screening, molecular docking, and molecular simulation approach. Materials and Methods: In this study, we performed a subtractive genomics approach to identify the novel drug target for S.maltophilia. After obtaining the specific target, the next footstep was to identify inhibitors that include the calculation of 2D Similarity search, Molecular Docking, and Molecular Simulation for the drug development for the S.maltophilia. Results: With an efficient subtractive genomic approach, five unique targets as the impressive therapeutics founded out of 4386 protein genes. In which UDP-D-acetylmuramic (murF) was the most remarkable target. Further virtual screening, docking, and dynamics resulted in the identification of seven novel inhibitors. Conclusion: Further, in vitro and in vivo bioassay of the identified novel inhibitors could facilitate effective drug use against S.maltophilia.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 3579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tae-Woo Choi ◽  
Jeong Cho ◽  
Joohong Ahnn ◽  
Hyun-Ok Song

Lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis caused by filarial nematodes are important diseases leading to considerable morbidity throughout tropical countries. Diethylcarbamazine (DEC), albendazole (ALB), and ivermectin (IVM) used in massive drug administration are not highly effective in killing the long-lived adult worms, and there is demand for the development of novel macrofilaricidal drugs affecting new molecular targets. A Ca2+ binding protein, calumenin, was identified as a novel and nematode-specific drug target for filariasis, due to its involvement in fertility and cuticle development in nematodes. As sterilizing and killing effects of the adult worms are considered to be ideal profiles of new drugs, calumenin could be an eligible drug target. Indeed, the Caenorhabditis elegans mutant model of calumenin exhibited enhanced drug acceptability to both microfilaricidal drugs (ALB and IVM) even at the adult stage, proving the roles of the nematode cuticle in efficient drug entry. Molecular modeling revealed that structural features of calumenin were only conserved among nematodes (C. elegans, Brugia malayi, and Onchocerca volvulus). Structural conservation and the specificity of nematode calumenins enabled the development of drugs with good target selectivity between parasites and human hosts. Structure-based virtual screening resulted in the discovery of itraconazole (ITC), an inhibitor of sterol biosynthesis, as a nematode calumenin-targeting ligand. The inhibitory potential of ITC was tested using a nematode mutant model of calumenin.


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