Exploration of Fragment Binding Poses Leading to Efficient Discovery of Highly Potent and Orally Effective Inhibitors of FABP4 for Anti-inflammation
作者:Haixia Su、Yi Zou、Guofeng Chen、Huixia Dou、Hang Xie、Xiaojing Yuan、Xianglei Zhang、Naixia Zhang、Minjun Li、Yechun Xu
DOI:10.1021/acs.jmedchem.9b02107
日期:2020.4.23
Fatty-acid binding protein 4 (FABP4) is a promising therapeutic target for immunometabolic diseases, while its potential for systemic inflammatory response syndrome treatment has not been explored. Here, a series of 2-(phenylamino)benzoic acids as novel and potent FABP4 inhibitors are rationally designed based on an interesting fragment that adopts multiple binding poses within FABP4. A fusion of these binding poses leads to the design of compound 3 with an similar to 460-fold improvement in binding affinity compared to the initial fragment. A subsequent structure-aided optimization upon 3 results in a promising lead (17) with the highest binding affinity among all the inhibitors, exerting a significant anti-inflammatory effect in cells and effectively attenuating a systemic inflammatory damage in mice. Our work therefore presents a good example of lead compound discovery derived from the multiple binding poses of a fragment and provides a candidate for development of drugs against inflammation-related diseases.