Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

MDPI, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 9(23), p. 5054, 2022

DOI: 10.3390/ijms23095054

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Toward the Discovery of a Novel Class of Leads for High Altitude Disorders by Virtual Screening and Molecular Dynamics Approaches Targeting Carbonic Anhydrase

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

For decades, carbonic anhydrase (CA) inhibitors, most notably the acetazolamide-bearing 1,3,4-thiadiazole moiety, have been exploited at high altitudes to alleviate acute mountain sickness, a syndrome of symptomatic sensitivity to the altitude characterized by nausea, lethargy, headache, anorexia, and inadequate sleep. Therefore, inhibition of CA may be a promising therapeutic strategy for high-altitude disorders. In this study, co-crystallized inhibitors with 1,3,4-thiadiazole, 1,3-benzothiazole, and 1,2,5-oxadiazole scaffolds were employed for pharmacophore-based virtual screening of the ZINC database, followed by molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation studies against CA to find possible ligands that may emerge as promising inhibitors. Compared to the co-crystal ligands of PDB-1YDB, 6BCC, and 6IC2, ZINC12336992, ZINC24751284, and ZINC58324738 had the highest docking scores of −9.0, −9.0, and −8.9 kcal/mol, respectively. A molecular dynamics (MD) simulation analysis of 100 ns was conducted to verify the interactions of the top-scoring molecules with CA. The system’s backbone revealed minor fluctuations, indicating that the CA–ligand complex was stable during the simulation period. Simulated trajectories were used for the MM-GBSA analysis, showing free binding energies of −16.00 ± 0.19, −21.04 ± 0.17, and −19.70 ± 0.18 kcal/mol, respectively. In addition, study of the frontier molecular orbitals of these compounds by DFT-based optimization at the level of B3LYP and the 6-311G(d,p) basis set showed negative values of the HOMO and LUMO, indicating that the ligands are energetically stable, which is essential for forming a stable ligand–protein complex. These molecules may prove to be a promising therapy for high-altitude disorders, necessitating further investigations.