Formation of Periodic γ‐Turns in α/β‐Hybrid Peptides: DFT and NMR Experimental Evidence

Hybrid peptidic oligomers comprising natural and unnatural amino acid residues that can exhibit biomolecular folding and hydrogen‐bonding mimicry have attracted considerable interest in recent years. While a variety of hybrid peptidic helices have been reported in the literature, other secondary structural patterns such as γ‐turns and ribbons have not been well explored so far. The present work reports the design of novel periodic γ‐turns in the oligomers of 1:1 natural‐α/unnatural trans‐β‐norborenene (TNAA) amino acid residues. Through DFT, NMR, and MD studies, it is convincingly shown that, in the mixed conformational pool, the heterogeneous backbone of the hybrid peptides preferentially adopt periodic 8‐membered (pseudo γ‐turn)/7‐membered (inverse γ‐turn) hydrogen bonds in both polar and non‐polar solvent media. It is observed that the stereochemistry and local conformational preference of the β‐amino acid building blocks have a profound influence on accessing the specific secondary fold. These findings may be of significant relevance for the development of molecular scaffolds that facilitate desired positioning of functional side‐chains.     

3D-QSAR and molecular docking analysis of biphenyl amide derivatives as p38α mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors

The p38α mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase plays a vital role in treating many inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's disease and psoriasis. Herein, we have performed 3D-QSAR and molecular docking analysis on a novel series of biphenyl amides to design potent p38 MAP kinase inhibitors. This study correlates the p38 MAP kinase inhibitory activities of 80 biphenyl amide derivatives to several stereochemical parameters representing steric, electrostatic, hydrophobic, hydrogen bond donor and acceptor fields. The resulting model from CoMFA and CoMSIA exhibited excellent [Formula: see text] values of 0.979 and 0.942, and [Formula: see text] values of 0.766 and 0.748, respectively. CoMFA predicted [Formula: see text] of 0.987 and CoMSIA predicted [Formula: see text] of 0.761 showed that the predicted values were in good agreement with experimental values. Glide (5.5) program gave the path for binding mode exploration between the inhibitors and p38α MAP kinase. We have accordingly designed novel p38α MAP kinase inhibitors by utilizing LeapFrog and predicted with excellent activity in the developed models.