基于毛细管电泳的天然产物中酶抑制剂筛选研究进展

人类疾病的发生往往与体内各种酶的功能失调密切相关,因此酶一直是目前新药研发的重要靶标。天然产物是发现新药的宝贵资源,但是由于成分复杂,活性筛选一直受制于耗时费力的分离纯化过程。毛细管电泳（CE）技术由于具有样品和试剂消耗少、灵活多样的分离模式且不受样品基质干扰的特点,可以直接从粗提物开始筛选活性成分,在复杂样品活性筛选中显示出独特的优势。该文综述了近十年来CE在天然产物中酶抑制剂筛选的研究进展。其中重点介绍了CE应用于重要药物靶标,包括转移酶（激酶）、水解酶以及氧化还原酶等方面的应用,总结了用于酶抑制剂筛选的电泳分离模式和酶动力学研究,并展望了CE用于天然产物中活性成分筛选的应用前景。     

超高效液相色谱-四极杆-飞行时间质谱法定性筛查保健食品中西地那非及其相关功效类非法添加化合物

建立了超高效液相色谱-四极杆-飞行时间质谱（UPLC-Q-TOF-MS）定性筛查102种西地那非及其相关功效化合物的方法。甲醇超声提取样品;采用Agilent Poroshell 120 SB-C18色谱柱（75 mm×3.0 mm,2.7 μm）,以0.1%（v/v）甲酸水溶液-乙腈为流动相梯度洗脱,流速0.4 mL/min;采用电喷雾离子（ESI）源,Q-TOF-MS作检测器,正离子模式检测;与对照品保留时间、母离子及碎片离子精确相对分子质量、元素组成比对,准确定性。西地那非等100种化合物在10种基质中的检出限为0.1~50 mg/kg或0.1~50 mg/L。并分类归纳了文中涉及的98种磷酸二酯酶5抑制剂质谱碎片裂解规律,为可疑物的识别和鉴定提供参考。该方法已应用于实际样品的测定,检出19种化合物,有效打击了非法添加行为。     

Rapid Screening of Lipase Inhibitors from Ophiopogonis Radix Using High-Performance Thin Layer Chromatography by Two Step Gradient Elution Combined with Bioautographic Method

In this study, a high-performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) method by two step gradient elution with two mobile phases was developed for the simultaneous analysis of seven constituents in Ophiopogonis Radix. The chromatography was performed on silica gel 60 F₂₅₄ plate with dichloromethane-methanol-ethyl acetate-water (70:25:12:3, v/v/v/v) and dichloromethane-methanol (300:1, v/v) as the mobile phase for two step gradient elution. Then, the HPTLC profiles were observed after derivatization with 10% sulfuric acid in ethanol solution. The obtained HPTLC images were further analyzed by chemometric approaches and the samples could be clustered based on regions and/or growth years, which were two important factors affecting the constituents in Ophiopogonis Radix. Furthermore, five compounds including ophiopogonin D, ophiopojaponin C, ophiopogonin D’, ophiopogonin C’ and methylophiopogonanone B were screened as potential lipase inhibitors from Ophiopogonis Radix by the HPTLC-bioautographic method. The binding modes and interactions between the five compounds and lipase were further explored by molecular docking analysis. The developed HPTLC method could be used for quality control of Ophiopogonis Radix and screening of the potential lipase inhibitors.     

An Update on Synthesis of Coumarin Sulfonamides as Enzyme Inhibitors and Anticancer Agents

Coumarin is an important six-membered aromatic heterocyclic pharmacophore, widely distributed in natural products and synthetic molecules. The versatile and unique features of coumarin nucleus, in combination with privileged sulfonamide moiety, have enhanced the broad spectrum of biological activities. The research and development of coumarin, sulfonamide-based pharmacology, and medicinal chemistry have become active topics, and attracted the attention of medicinal chemists, pharmacists, and synthetic chemists. Coumarin sulfonamide compounds and analogs as clinical drugs have been used to cure various diseases with high therapeutic potency, which have shown their enormous development value. The diversified and wide array of biological activities such as anticancer, antibacterial, anti-fungal, antioxidant and anti-viral, etc. were displayed by diversified coumarin sulfonamides. The present systematic and comprehensive review in the current developments of synthesis and the medicinal chemistry of coumarin sulfonamide-based scaffolds give a whole range of therapeutics, especially in the field of oncology and carbonic anhydrase inhibitors. In the present review, various synthetic approaches, strategies, and methodologies involving effect of catalysts, the change of substrates, and the employment of various synthetic reaction conditions to obtain high yields is cited.     

Biological and Cheminformatics Studies of Newly Designed Triazole Based Derivatives as Potent Inhibitors against Mushroom Tyrosinase

A series of nine novel 1,2,4-triazole based compounds were synthesized through a multistep reaction pathway and their structures were scrutinized by using spectral methods such as FTIR, LC-MS, 1H NMR, and 13C NMR. The synthesized derivatives were screened for inhibitory activity against the mushroom tyrosinase and we found that all the synthesized compounds demonstrated decent inhibitory activity against tyrosinase. However, among the series of compounds, N-(4-fluorophenyl)-2-(5-(2-fluorophenyl)-4-(4-fluorophenyl)-4H-1,2,4-triazol-3-ylthio) acetamide exhibited more prominent activity when accompanied with the standard drug kojic acid. Furthermore, the molecular docking studies identified the interaction profile of all synthesized derivatives at the active site of tyrosinase. Based on these results, N-(4-fluorophenyl)-2-(5-(2-fluorophenyl)-4-(4-fluorophenyl)-4H-1,2,4-triazol-3-ylthio) acetamide could be used as a novel scaffold to design some new drugs against melanogenesis.     

Indole-Based Tubulin Inhibitors: Binding Modes and SARs Investigations

Tubulin inhibitors can interfere with normal cell mitosis and inhibit cell proliferation through interfering with the normal structure and function of microtubules, forming spindle filaments. Indole, as a privileged pharmacological skeleton, has been widely used in anti-cancer inhibitors. A variety of alkaloids containing an indole core obtained from natural sources have been proven to inhibit tubulin polymerization, and an ever-increasing number of synthetic indole-based tubulin inhibitors have been reported. Among these, several kinds of indole-based derivatives, such as TMP analogues, aroylindoles, arylthioindoles, fused indole, carbazoles, azacarbolines, alkaloid nortopsentin analogues and bis-indole derivatives, have shown good inhibition activities towards tubulin polymerization. The binding modes and SARs investigations of synthetic indole derivatives, along with a brief mechanism on their anti-tubulin activity, are presented in this review.     

Identification of Pharmacophoric Fragments of DYRK1A Inhibitors Using Machine Learning Classification Models

Dual-specific tyrosine phosphorylation regulated kinase 1 (DYRK1A) has been regarded as a potential therapeutic target of neurodegenerative diseases, and considerable progress has been made in the discovery of DYRK1A inhibitors. Identification of pharmacophoric fragments provides valuable information for structure- and fragment-based design of potent and selective DYRK1A inhibitors. In this study, seven machine learning methods along with five molecular fingerprints were employed to develop qualitative classification models of DYRK1A inhibitors, which were evaluated by cross-validation, test set, and external validation set with four performance indicators of predictive classification accuracy (CA), the area under receiver operating characteristic (AUC), Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC), and balanced accuracy (BA). The PubChem fingerprint-support vector machine model (CA = 0.909, AUC = 0.933, MCC = 0.717, BA = 0.855) and PubChem fingerprint along with the artificial neural model (CA = 0.862, AUC = 0.911, MCC = 0.705, BA = 0.870) were considered as the optimal modes for training set and test set, respectively. A hybrid data balancing method SMOTETL, a combination of synthetic minority over-sampling technique (SMOTE) and Tomek link (TL) algorithms, was applied to explore the impact of balanced learning on the performance of models. Based on the frequency analysis and information gain, pharmacophoric fragments related to DYRK1A inhibition were also identified. All the results will provide theoretical supports and clues for the screening and design of novel DYRK1A inhibitors.     

Simple Synthesis of a Heterocyclophane Exhibiting Anti-c-Met Activity by Acting as a Hatch Blocking Access to the Active Site**

A simple approach to the synthesis of heterocyclophane consisting of two 4,4’-bithiazoles has been developed in mild conditions. The heterocyclophane with two short chains was conveniently prepared by Hantzsch thiazoles synthesis using the reaction of 3-tert-butoxycarbonyl-3-azapentanethiocarboxamide with 1,4-dibromobutane-2,3-dione in methanol under reflux for only 15 min. Amino groups at the linkers of this heterocyclophane can be functionalized to give acylated and carbamate derivatives. Their properties as protein kinase inhibitors were investigated, and one of the heterocyclophanes exhibited specific anti-activity for c-mesenchymal epithelial transition factor (IC₅₀=603 nm ), among seven types of protein kinases investigated. The computational site identification by ligand competitive saturation method was used to determine why the one heterocyclophane exhibited strong anti-activity for c-mesenchymal epithelial transition factor.     

Freezing the Dynamic Gap for Selectivity: Motion‐Based Design of Inhibitors of the Shikimate Kinase Enzyme

Shikimate kinase (SK), the fifth enzyme of the aromatic amino acid biosynthesis, is a recognized target for antibiotic drug discovery. The potential of the distinct dynamic apolar gap, which isolates the natural substrate from the solvent environment for catalysis, and the motion of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Helicobacter pylori SK enzymes, which was observed by molecular dynamics simulations, was explored for inhibition selectivity. The results of the biochemical and computational studies reveal that the incorporation of bulky groups at position C5 of 5‐aminoshikimic acid and the natural substrate enhances the selectivity for the H. pylori enzyme due to key motion differences in the shikimic acid binding domain (mainly helix α5). These studies show that the less‐exploited motion‐based design approach not only is an alternative strategy for the development of competitive inhibitors, but could also be a way to achieve selectivity against a particular enzyme among its homologues.