Virtual screening of imidazole analogs as potential hepatitis C virus NS5B polymerase inhibitors

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a global health threat and current therapies warrant the need for novel HCV therapies. Several synthetic analogs targeting HCV serine protease and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase have entered clinical development. To investigate the novel HCV NS5B RdRp polymerase inhibitor, screening of a designed data set consisting of benzimidazole analogs by the FlexX docking approach was performed. Binding interactions at the active sites (PDB ID: 2DXS) were evaluated leading to the rationalization of further synthesis and evaluation procedures.     

Thermal conductivity of (La0.25Pr0.75)0.7Ca0.3MnO3 under giant isotope effect conditions

The thermal conductivity of (La_0.25Pr_0.75)_0.7Ca_0.3MnO₃ manganite has been studied. The isotope substitution of ¹⁸O for ¹⁶O in this compound leads to a ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic phase transition at low temperatures. It has been found that the thermal conductivity in the ferromagnetic state is approximately two times higher than in the antiferromagnetic state. It has been shown that the small value of thermal conductivity and its temperature dependence can be due to strong phonon scattering from crystal lattice defects, which are thought of as Jahn-Teller distortions. The parameters of this scattering can be determined within the Debye model of thermal conductivity from a comparison of samples differing in their isotope composition.     

Determination of belfosdil, a new calcium channel blocker, in human plasma by capillary gas chromatography with nitrogen-phosphorus detection

Belfosdil and the internal standard were extracted from human plasma by a double liquid-liquid extraction. After a concentration step, gas chromatographic analysis of the sample was performed using a capillary fused-silica column and a nitrogen-phosphorus detector. The limit of detection of belfosdil was 0.025 ng/ml and the standard curve was linear over the range 0.05-100 ng/ml. The intra-assay and inter-assay precisions were within 7% (relative standard deviation) and the intra-assay and inter-assay accuracy values deviated by less than 5%. The extractability of belfosdil was 79%. The assay method was successfully used for the analysis of plasma samples from clinical studies with dose ranges of 5-100 mg of belfosdil.     

The International Conference on Harmonisation Guidance in Practice: Stress Degradation Studies on Lamivudine and Development of a Validated Specific Stability-Indicating HPTLC Assay Method

A sensitive, selective, precise and stability-indicating high-performance thin-layer chromatographic method of analysis of lamivudine both as a bulk drug and in formulations was developed and validated. The solvent system consisted of carbon tetrachloride – methanol – chloroform - acetonitrile (7.0: 3.0: 2.0: 1.5, v/v/v/v). Densitometric analysis of lamivudine was carried out in the absorbance mode at 275 nm. This system was found to give compact spots for lamivudine (R_F value of 0.36 ± 0.02) following double development of chromatoplates with the same mobile phase. Lamivudine was subjected to acid and alkali hydrolysis, oxidation, dry heat and wet heat treatment and photo degradation. The drug undergoes degradation under acidic, basic conditions, oxidation, wet heat and photo degradation. Also the degraded products were well resolved from the pure drug with significantly different R_F values. Linearity was found to be in the range of 50 – 1000 ng spot^–1 with significantly high value of correlation coefficient. The linear regression analysis data for the calibration plots showed good linear relationship with r² = 0.9994 ± 0.05 in the working concentration range of 300 ng spot^–1 to 1000 ng spot^–1. The mean value of slope and intercept were 0.11 ± 0.08 and 10.47 ± 1.21, respectively. The method was validated for precision, robustness and recovery. The limit of detection and quantitation were 15 ng spot^–1 and 40 ng spot^–1 respectively. As the method could effectively separate the drug from its degradation products, it can be employed as a stability indicating one. Moreover, the proposed HPTLC method was utilized to investigate the kinetics of acid degradation process. Arrhenius plot was constructed and activation energy was calculated.     

Microwave-assisted rapid synthesis of methyl 2,4,5-trimethoxyphenylpropionate, a metabolite of Cordia alliodora

Microwave assisted condensation of asaronaldehyde (2) with malonic acid in piperidine-AcOH provides 2,4,5-trimethoxycinnamic acid (3) in 87% yield within 4 min, which upon further reduction with PdCl2- HCOOH-aq. NaOH gives 3-(2,4,5-trimethoxy)phenyl propionic acid (4) in 88% yield within 3 min. Esterification of 4 with MeOH-H+ gives methyl 2,4,5-trimethoxyphenylpropionate (1), a metabolite of Cordia alliodora, in 94% yield within 3 min (overall 69% yield).     

Phosphane-free green protocol for selective nitro reduction with an iron-based catalyst

Iron phthalocyanine with iron sulfate has been successfully applied for high chemo- and regioselective reduction of aromatic nitro compounds to give the corresponding amines in a green solvent system without using any toxic ligand. The catalytic systems were also compatible with a large range of other reducible functional groups, such as keto, acid, amide, ester, halogen, lactone, nitrile, N-benzyl, O-benzyl, hydroxy, and heterocycles. In the present study, dinitro compounds have been regioselectively reduced to the corresponding amines with high yield. In most of the cases the conversion and selectivity was greater than 99% as determined by GC-MS analysis.     

Complete 13C NMR chemical shifts assignment for cholesterol crystals by combined CP-MAS spectral editing and ab initio GIPAW calculations with dispersion forces

We report here the first fully ab initio determination of (13)C NMR spectra for several crystal structures of cholesterol, observed in various biomaterials. We combine Gauge-Including Projector Augmented Waves (GIPAW) calculations at relaxed structures, fully including dispersion forces, with Magic Angle Spinning Solid State NMR experiments and spectral editing to achieve a detailed interpretation of the complex NMR spectra of cholesterol crystals. By introducing an environment-dependent secondary referencing scheme in our calculations, not only do we reproduce the characteristic spectral features of the different crystalline polymorphs, thus clearly discriminating among them, but also closely represent the spectrum in the region of several highly overlapping peaks. This, in combination with spectral editing, allows us to provide a complete peak assignment for monohydrate (ChM) and low-temperature anhydrous (ChAl) crystal polymorphs. Our results show that the synergy between ab initio calculations and refined experimental techniques can be exploited for an accurate and efficient NMR crystallography of complex systems of great interest for biomaterial studies. The method is general in nature and can be applied for studies of various complex biomaterials.     

Co2+/Co+ redox tuning in methyltransferases induced by a conformational change at the axial ligand

Density functional theory and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics computations predict cob(I)alamin (Co(+)Cbx), a universal B(12) intermediate state, to be a pentacoordinated square pyramidal complex, which is different from the most widely accepted viewpoint of its tetracoordinated square planar geometry. The square pyramidality of Co(+)Cbx is inspired by the fact that a Co(+) ion, which has a dominant d(8) electronic configuration, forms a distinctive Co(+)--H interaction because of the availability of appropriately oriented filled d orbitals. This uniquely H-bonded Co(+)Cbx may have catalytic relevance in the context of thermodynamically uphill Co(2+)/Co(+) reduction that constitutes an essential component in a large variety of methyltransferases.     

An inverse problem of identifying the time-dependent potential in a fourth-order pseudo-parabolic equation from additional condition

The aim of this work is to identify numerically, for the first time, the time-dependent potential coefficient in a fourth-order pseudo-parabolic equation with nonlocal initial data, nonlocal boundary conditions, and the boundary data as overdetermination condition. This problem emerges significantly in the modeling of various phenomena in physics and engineering. From literature we already know that this inverse problem has a unique solution. However, the problem is still ill-posed by being unstable to noise in the input data. For the numerical realization, we apply the quintic B-spline (QB-spline) collocation method for discretizing the pseudo-parabolic problem and the Tikhonov regularization for finding a stable and accurate solution. The resulting nonlinear minimization problem is solved using the MATLAB subroutine lsqnonlin. Moreover, the von Neumann stability analysis is also discussed.     

On factorization of polynomials in henselian valued fields

Guàrdia, Montes and Nart generalized the well-known method of Ore to find complete factorization of polynomials with coe?cients in finite extensions of p-adic numbers using Newton polygons of higher order (cf. [Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 364 (2012), 361–416]). In this paper, we develop the theory of higher order Newton polygons for polynomials with coe?cients in henselian valued fields of arbitrary rank and use it to obtain factorization of such polynomials. Our approach is different from the one followed by Guàrdia et al. Some preliminary results needed for proving the main results are also obtained which are of independent interest.