Development and Validation of a Docking-Based Virtual Screening Platform for the Identification of New Lactate Dehydrogenase Inhibitors
作者:Carlotta Granchi、Alice Capecchi、Gianluca Del Frate、Adriano Martinelli、Marco Macchia、Filippo Minutolo、Tiziano Tuccinardi
DOI:10.3390/molecules20058772
日期:——
The human muscle isoform of lactate dehydrogenase (hLDH5) is one of the key enzymes of the glycolytic process. It is overexpressed in metastatic cancer cells and is linked to the vitality of tumors in hypoxic conditions. With the aim of identifying new hLDH5 inhibitors, a fully automated docking-based virtual screening platform was developed by considering different protein conformations and the consensus docking strategy. In order to verify the reliability of the reported platform, a small database of about 10,000 compounds was filtered by using this method, and the top-ranked compounds were tested for their hLDH5 inhibition activity. Enzymatic assays revealed that, among the ten selected compounds, two proved to efficiently inhibit enzyme activity with IC50 values in the micromolar range. These results demonstrate the validity of the methodologies we followed, encouraging the application of larger virtual screening studies and further refinements of the platform. Furthermore, the two active compounds herein described may be considered as interesting leads for the development of new and more efficient LDH inhibitors.
人类肌肉乳酸脱氢酶同种型(hLDH5)是糖酵解过程中的关键酶之一。在转移癌细胞中,其表达过高,并且与肿瘤在缺氧条件下的生存力相关。为了识别新的hLDH5抑制剂,开发了一个完全自动化的基于对接的虚拟筛选平台,该平台考虑了不同的蛋白质构象和共识对接策略。为了验证该平台的可靠性,使用该方法对一个约10,000个化合物的小数据库进行了筛选,并测试了排名靠前的化合物的hLDH5抑制活性。酶学测定显示,在选定的十个化合物中,有两个证明能有效抑制酶活性,其IC50值在微摩尔范围内。这些结果证明了我们所采用方法的有效性,鼓励进行更大规模的虚拟筛选研究以及对平台的进一步完善。此外,本文描述的这两种活性化合物可以视为开发新型高效LDH抑制剂的有趣线索。