A ring-bracing approach to computer-assisted ligand design

Rigid inhibitors suffer a smaller loss of conformational entropy when they bind to a macromolecular receptor than their acyclic counterparts. They can also be useful for elucidating pharmacophores due to their reduced conformational space and may be more amenable to synthesis. Computational approaches to rational drug design should therefore take these factors into consideration when suggesting possible compounds. We describe how an acyclic chain which links two parts of a receptor site can be ‘braced’ using ring templates. The acyclic chains may be produced from a number of sources, including lattices or the structures of known inhibitors. The resulting structures contain a rich variety of isolated and fused ring systems, which provide many useful molecular skeletons for subsequent inhibitor design. © 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Synthesis of 2,3,4,7-tetrahydro-1H-azepines as privileged ligand scaffolds for the design of aspartic protease inhibitors via a ring-closing metathesis approach

We have developed a short and highly efficient synthetic strategy towards the hitherto hardly known 3,5- and 3,6-disubstituted 2,3,4,7-tetrahydro-1H-azepine scaffold via a ring-closing metathesis approach utilizing inexpensive and readily available starting material such as methyl acrylate and allylamine. Both seven-membered azacycle scaffolds bearing suitable functional groups, which can easily be modified by means of standard synthetic chemistry, serve as non-peptidic heterocyclic core structures for the further design and synthesis of aspartic protease inhibitors. Through specific decoration with appropriate side chains, individual inhibitors can be tailored with respect to selectivity towards particular family members. A first generation of this class of non-peptidic inhibitors have been tested against the aspartic proteases Plasmepsin II and HIV-I protease, respectively, showing promising activity as well as selectivity with IC₅₀ values in the micromolar range.     

The modular approach to ligand discovery

Identifying specific protein-ligand interactions is a long-standing problem in drug discovery and chemical biology, which is only exacerbated by the abundance of uncharacterized proteins revealed by genomics. Last month in Chemistry Biology, Sem et al. described a powerful technique for rapidly screening protein families for ligands.     

Non-heme iron catalysts for the benzylic oxidation: a parallel ligand screening approach

Ethylbenzene and 4-ethylanisole were used as model substrates for benzylic oxidation with H₂O₂ or O₂ using a range of non-heme iron catalysts following a parallel ligand screening approach. Effective oxidation was found for Fe complexes based on tetra- and pentadentate nitrogen ligands affording the corresponding benzylic alcohol and ketone.     

Bifunctional ligand approach for constructing 3d-4f heterometallic clusters

Using a predesigned Schiff-base tripodal ligand, a heptanuclear CuII-GdIII cluster with a spin ground state of S=17/2 has been synthesized.     

Combinatorial ligand design targeted at protein families

We describe a method to create ligands specific for a given protein family. The method is applied to generate ligand candidates for the cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) family. The CDK family of proteins is involved in regulating the cell cycle by alternately activating and deactivating the cell's progression through the cycle. CDKs are activated by association with cyclin and are inhibited by complexation with small molecules. X-ray crystal structures are available for three of the thirteen known CDK family members: CDK2, CDK5 and CDK 6. In this work, we use novel computational approaches to design ligand candidates that are potentially inhibitory across the three CDK family members as well as more specific molecules which can potentially inhibit one or any combination of two of the three CDK family members. We define a new scoring term, SpecScore, to quantify the potential inhibitory power of the generated structures. According to a search of the World Drug Alerts, the highest scoring SpecScore molecule that is specific for the three CDK family members shows very similar chemical characteristics and functional groups to numerous molecules known to deactivate several members of the CDK family.     

A novel design approach for lithium-sulphur batteries

A novel microwave synthesis path for sulphur-carbon compounds for lithium batteries was successfully developed. Model electrodes built from these materials showed an excellent and highly stable electrochemical performance over several hundred of cycles with a remarkable initial specific charge of about 1300 A h kg^?1 and a remaining specific charge of 1012 A h kg^?1 (at 1 C) after about 500 cycles. In addition, a silicon-containing anode setup was used to investigate the highly beneficial influence of silicon nanowires on the electrochemical properties of lithium-sulphur batteries.     

A ligand field approach to orthoaxial complexes

First order perturbation considerations are applied to general orthoaxial chromophores. These contain monatomic or linear ligands which are so positioned around the central ion that Cartesian coordinate axes can be placed through the ligands. The zero order functions used are the orbitals of the partially filled shell which are proper basis functions of the regular octahedron and can be thought of as general molecular orbitals of a particular regularly octahedral chromophore. Certain degeneracies not demanded by the proper chromophoric symmetry are rationalized in terms of the holohedrized symmetry, which also determines the number of parameters required for the full parametrization. All the results obtained are, apart from a minor correction given explicitly, formally equivalent to those obtained earlier using the angular overlap model and the electrostatic model. The extra correction required in the present more general treatment is probably unimportant in view of the approximations involved, in particular that of using a basis restricted to five orbitals.     

Structure-based ligand design for flexible proteins: Application of new F-DycoBlock

A method of structure-based ligand design – DycoBlock – has been proposed and tested by Liu et al.[1]. It was further improved by Zhu et al. and applied to design new selective inhibitors of cyclooxygenase 2 [2]. In the current work, we present a new methodology – F-DycoBlock that allows for the incorporation of receptor flexibility. During the designing procedure, both the receptor and molecular building blocks are subjected to the multiple-copy stochastic molecular dynamics (MCSMD) simulation [1], while the protein moves in the mean field of all copies. It is tested for two enzymes studied previously – cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) and human immunodeficiency type 1 (HIV-1) protease. To identify the applicability of F-DycoBlock, the binding protein structure was used as starting point to explore the conformational space around the bound state. This method can be easily extended to accommodate the flexibility in different degree. Four types of treatment of the receptor flexibility – all-atom restrained, backbone restrained, intramolecular hydrogen-bond restrained and active-site flexible – were tested with or without the grid approximation. Two inhibitors, SC-558 for COX-2 and L700417 for HIV-1 protease, are used in this testing study for comparison with previous results. The accuracy of recovery, binding energy, solvent accessible surface area (SASA) and positional root-mean-square (RMS) deviation are used as criteria. The results indicate that F-DycoBlock is a robust methodology for flexible drug design. It is particularly notable that the protein flexibility has been perfectly associated with each stage of drug design – search for the binding sites, dynamic assembly and optimization of candidate compounds. When all protein atoms were restrained, F-DycoBlock yielded higher accuracy of recovery than DycoBlock (100%). If backbone atoms were restrained, the same ratio of accuracy was achieved. Moreover, with the intramolecular hydrogen bonds restrained, reasonable conformational changes were observed for HIV-1 protease during the long-time MCSMD simulation and L700417 was reassembled at the active site. It makes it possible to study the receptor motion in the binding process.     

A novel approach for the synthesis of the peripheral benzodiazepine receptor ligand, PK11195

A new synthesis of the peripheral benzodiazepine receptor ligand, PK11195 has been developed in only six-steps using a Heck-type reaction and a Suzuki coupling to effect the key transformations. The flexibility of this new approach is demonstrated by the synthesis of an iodo-analogue of PK11195 prepared from the corresponding bromide using a copper catalysed aromatic Finkelstein reaction.     

Methods for the prediction of protein-ligand binding sites for structure-based drug design and virtual ligand screening

Structure Based Drug Design (SBDD) is a computational approach to lead discovery that uses the three-dimensional structure of a protein to fit drug-like molecules into a ligand binding site to modulate function. Identifying the location of the binding site is therefore a vital first step in this process, restricting the search space for SBDD or virtual screening studies. The detection and characterisation of functional sites on proteins has increasingly become an area of interest. Structural genomics projects are increasingly yielding protein structures with unknown functions and binding sites. Binding site prediction was pioneered by pocket detection, since the binding site is often found in the largest pocket. More recent methods involve phylogenetic analysis, identifying structural similarity with proteins of known function and identifying regions on the protein surface with a potential for high binding affinity. Binding site prediction has been used in several SBDD projects and has been incorporated into several docking tools. We discuss different methods of ligand binding site prediction, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they have been used in SBDD.     

A branch-and-bound method for optimal atom-type assignment in de novo ligand design

This paper investigates a computational procedure for the determination of the atom types on the vertices of a molecular skeleton to optimize interaction with the receptor site whilst maintaining a synthetically reasonable structure. The connectivity of the skeleton is analysed and appropriate atom types are compiled for each vertex. Receptor ionization and conformational states are generated by varying the positions of hydrogen atoms and electron lone pairs in the carboxyl, rotatable hydroxyl and amino groups. The structure is divided into small non-overlapping substructures. Atom types are assigned exhaustively onto each of the substructures using a depth-first search method; chemical rules are applied to reject unacceptable atom combinations early on. An empirical interaction score is calculated and the representatives of each partial structure are stored in ascending order according to their scores. The branch-and-bound procedure is then used to find the structures with the lowest scores. The method is illustrated using five protein–ligand complexes.     

Structure-guided design of CPPC-paired disulfide-rich peptide libraries for ligand and drug discovery

Peptides constrained through multiple disulfides (or disulfide-rich peptides, DRPs) have been an emerging frontier for ligand and drug discovery. Such peptides have the potential to combine the binding capability of biologics with the stability and bioavailability of smaller molecules. However, DRPs with stable three-dimensional (3D) structures are usually of natural origin or engineered from natural ones. Here, we report the discovery and identification of CPPC (cysteine–proline–proline–cysteine) motif-directed DRPs with stable 3D structures (i.e., CPPC–DRPs). A range of new CPPC–DRPs were designed or selected from either random or structure–convergent peptide libraries. Thus, for the first time we revealed that the CPPC–DRPs can maintain diverse 3D structures by taking advantage of constraints from unique dimeric CPPC mini-loops, including irregular structures and regular α-helix and β-sheet folds. New CPPC–DRPs that can specifically bind the receptors (CD28) on the cell surface were also successfully discovered and identified using our DRP-discovery platform. Overall, this study provides the basis for accessing an unconventional peptide structure space previously inaccessible by natural DRPs and computational designs, inspiring the development of new peptide ligands and therapeutics.

CPPC-paired disulfide-rich peptides with stable 3D structures have been discovered through rational library design and screening, providing unconventional peptide scaffolds for the development of new peptide therapeutics.     

Alchemical absolute protein–ligand binding free energies for drug design

The recent advances in relative protein–ligand binding free energy calculations have shown the value of alchemical methods in drug discovery. Accurately assessing absolute binding free energies, although highly desired, remains a challenging endeavour, mostly limited to small model cases. Here, we demonstrate accurate first principles based absolute binding free energy estimates for 128 pharmaceutically relevant targets. We use a novel rigorous method to generate protein–ligand ensembles for the ligand in its decoupled state. Not only do the calculations deliver accurate protein–ligand binding affinity estimates, but they also provide detailed physical insight into the structural determinants of binding. We identify subtle rotamer rearrangements between apo and holo states of a protein that are crucial for binding. When compared to relative binding free energy calculations, obtaining absolute binding free energies is considerably more challenging in large part due to the need to explicitly account for the protein in its apo state. In this work we present several approaches to obtain apo state ensembles for accurate absolute ΔG calculations, thus outlining protocols for prospective application of the methods for drug discovery.

Molecular dynamics based absolute protein–ligand binding free energies can be calculated accurately and at large scale to facilitate drug discovery.     

Catalytic asymmetric deprotonation using a ligand exchange approach

A novel ligand exchange approach to catalytic asymmetric deprotonation-electrophilic trapping has been developed that uses 1.3 equiv of s-BuLi, 0.06-0.2 equiv of chiral diamine ((-)-sparteine or a (+)-sparteine surrogate), and 1.2 equiv of achiral bispidine. The methodology is illustrated with a range of examples and gives access to either enantiomer of useful chiral products in good yields using substoichiometric amounts of chiral diamines.     

Fine-tuning of boron complexes with cage-shaped ligand geometry: rational design of triphenolic ligand as a template for structure control

Boron complexes surrounded with organic cages were controlled precisely by a remote atom placed at the bottom of the cage. A replacement of the bottom tether atom (carbon or silicon) changed the characteristics (kinetic and thermodynamic factors) of boron complexes by geometric effects. A theoretical study shows that the bottom atoms also control eigenvalues of MO. This cage complex will provide a systematic template for fine-tuning of metal complexes to create various properties.