Doctoral thesis
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In silico pharmacology in drug discovery: methods for binding affinity prediction, identifying protein-protein interaction breakers, and finding targets for small molecules

Defense date2011-03-10
Abstract

The present thesis addresses different areas of Computer-Aided Drug Design: 1) Binding affinity prediction: Steered molecular dynamics allowed to distinguish affinity differences as small as 4.3 μM for substrate analogues of the Herpes Simplex Virus 1 Thymidine Kinase. 2) Aggregation breakers: Homology modelling of the primary aggregation of the monoclonal antibody bevacizumab as well as docking and scaffold hopping led to the identification of AMP as a promising antibody aggregation breaker. 3) Protein-protein interaction inhibitors: Virtual screening yielded 43 potential inhibitors of a protein-protein interface of the NADPH oxidase 2 (NOX2), docking led to a binding mode for celastrol, and a GRID-based interaction analysis identified peptides with binding affinities comparable to the native peptide. 4) Target discovery: Potential targets for phenazopyridine were identified by inverse in silico screening, of which 80% were confirmed experimentally.

Keywords
  • Computer-aided drug design
  • Molecular modelling
  • Binding affinity prediction
  • Docking
  • Molecular dynamics
  • Steered molecular dynamics
  • Virtual screening
  • Inverse virtual screening
  • Thymidine kinase
  • Monoclonal antibody
  • Corticosteroid
  • Aggregation breaker
  • NADPH oxidase
  • Protein-protein interaction inhibitor
  • Small molecule
  • Peptide
  • Celastrol
  • Target discovery
  • Phenazopyridine
  • Selectivity
Citation (ISO format)
WESTERMAIER, Yvonne. In silico pharmacology in drug discovery: methods for binding affinity prediction, identifying protein-protein interaction breakers, and finding targets for small molecules. Doctoral Thesis, 2011. doi: 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:136333
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