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Majoumo-Mbe F, Sangbong NA, Tadjong Tcho A, Namba-Nzanguim CT, Simoben CV, Eni DB, Alhaji Isa M, Poli ANR, Cassel J, Salvino JM, Montaner LJ, Tietjen I, Ntie-Kang F. 5-chloro-3-(2-(2,4-dinitrophenyl) hydrazono)indolin-2-one: synthesis, characterization, biochemical and computational screening against SARS-CoV-2. CHEMICKE ZVESTI 2024; 78:3431-3441. [PMID: 38685970 PMCID: PMC11055700 DOI: 10.1007/s11696-023-03274-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/29/2023] [Accepted: 12/04/2023] [Indexed: 05/02/2024]
Abstract
Chemical prototypes with broad-spectrum antiviral activity are important toward developing new therapies that can act on both existing and emerging viruses. Binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to the host angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor is required for cellular entry of SARS-CoV-2. Toward identifying new chemical leads that can disrupt this interaction, including in the presence of SARS-CoV-2 adaptive mutations found in variants like omicron that can circumvent vaccine, immune, and therapeutic antibody responses, we synthesized 5-chloro-3-(2-(2,4-dinitrophenyl)hydrazono)indolin-2-one (H2L) from the condensation reaction of 5-chloroisatin and 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine in good yield. H2L was characterised by elemental and spectral (IR, electronic, Mass) analyses. The NMR spectrum of H2L indicated a keto-enol tautomerism, with the keto form being more abundant in solution. H2L was found to selectively interfere with binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) to the host angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor with a 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) of 0.26 μM, compared to an unrelated PD-1/PD-L1 ligand-receptor-binding pair with an IC50 of 2.06 μM in vitro (Selectivity index = 7.9). Molecular docking studies revealed that the synthesized ligand preferentially binds within the ACE2 receptor-binding site in a region distinct from where spike mutations in SARS-CoV-2 variants occur. Consistent with these models, H2L was able to disrupt ACE2 interactions with the RBDs from beta, delta, lambda, and omicron variants with similar activities. These studies indicate that H2L-derived compounds are potential inhibitors of multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants, including those capable of circumventing vaccine and immune responses. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11696-023-03274-5.
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Affiliation(s)
- Felicite Majoumo-Mbe
- Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, P. O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon
| | - Neba Abongwa Sangbong
- Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, P. O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon
| | - Alain Tadjong Tcho
- Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, P. O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon
| | - Cyril T. Namba-Nzanguim
- Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, P. O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon
- Center for Drug Discovery, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, P. O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon
| | - Conrad V. Simoben
- Center for Drug Discovery, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, P. O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon
| | - Donatus B. Eni
- Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, P. O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon
- Center for Drug Discovery, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, P. O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon
| | - Mustafa Alhaji Isa
- Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Maiduguri, PMB 1069, Maiduguri, Borno State Nigeria
| | | | - Joel Cassel
- The Wistar Institute, 3601 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
| | - Joseph M. Salvino
- The Wistar Institute, 3601 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
| | - Luis J. Montaner
- The Wistar Institute, 3601 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
| | - Ian Tietjen
- The Wistar Institute, 3601 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
| | - Fidele Ntie-Kang
- Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, P. O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon
- Center for Drug Discovery, Faculty of Science, University of Buea, P. O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon
- Institute of Pharmacy, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Kurt-Mothes-Strasse 3, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany
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Walder M, Edelstein E, Carroll M, Lazarev S, Fajardo JE, Fiser A, Viswanathan R. Integrated structure-based protein interface prediction. BMC Bioinformatics 2022; 23:301. [PMID: 35879651 PMCID: PMC9316365 DOI: 10.1186/s12859-022-04852-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/12/2022] [Accepted: 07/18/2022] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
Background Identifying protein interfaces can inform how proteins interact with their binding partners, uncover the regulatory mechanisms that control biological functions and guide the development of novel therapeutic agents. A variety of computational approaches have been developed for predicting a protein’s interfacial residues from its known sequence and structure. Methods using the known three-dimensional structures of proteins can be template-based or template-free. Template-based methods have limited success in predicting interfaces when homologues with known complex structures are not available to use as templates. The prediction performance of template-free methods that only rely only upon proteins’ intrinsic properties is limited by the amount of biologically relevant features that can be included in an interface prediction model. Results We describe the development of an integrated method for protein interface prediction (ISPIP) to explore the hypothesis that the efficacy of a computational prediction method of protein binding sites can be enhanced by using a combination of methods that rely on orthogonal structure-based properties of a query protein, combining and balancing both template-free and template-based features. ISPIP is a method that integrates these approaches through simple linear or logistic regression models and more complex decision tree models. On a diverse test set of 156 query proteins, ISPIP outperforms each of its individual classifiers in identifying protein binding interfaces. Conclusions The integrated method captures the best performance of individual classifiers and delivers an improved interface prediction. The method is robust and performs well even when one of the individual classifiers performs poorly on a particular query protein. This work demonstrates that integrating orthogonal methods that depend on different structural properties of proteins performs better at interface prediction than any individual classifier alone. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12859-022-04852-2.
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Affiliation(s)
- M Walder
- Department of Chemistry, Yeshiva College, Yeshiva University, New York, NY, 10033, USA
| | - E Edelstein
- Department of Chemistry, Yeshiva College, Yeshiva University, New York, NY, 10033, USA
| | - M Carroll
- Department of Chemistry, Yeshiva College, Yeshiva University, New York, NY, 10033, USA
| | - S Lazarev
- Department of Chemistry, Yeshiva College, Yeshiva University, New York, NY, 10033, USA
| | - J E Fajardo
- Department of Systems and Computational Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, 10461, USA
| | - A Fiser
- Department of Systems and Computational Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, 10461, USA
| | - R Viswanathan
- Department of Chemistry, Yeshiva College, Yeshiva University, New York, NY, 10033, USA.
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Hashemi ZS, Zarei M, Fath MK, Ganji M, Farahani MS, Afsharnouri F, Pourzardosht N, Khalesi B, Jahangiri A, Rahbar MR, Khalili S. In silico Approaches for the Design and Optimization of Interfering Peptides Against Protein-Protein Interactions. Front Mol Biosci 2021; 8:669431. [PMID: 33996914 PMCID: PMC8113820 DOI: 10.3389/fmolb.2021.669431] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2021] [Accepted: 04/06/2021] [Indexed: 01/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Large contact surfaces of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) remain to be an ongoing issue in the discovery and design of small molecule modulators. Peptides are intrinsically capable of exploring larger surfaces, stable, and bioavailable, and therefore bear a high therapeutic value in the treatment of various diseases, including cancer, infectious diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases. Given these promising properties, a long way has been covered in the field of targeting PPIs via peptide design strategies. In silico tools have recently become an inevitable approach for the design and optimization of these interfering peptides. Various algorithms have been developed to scrutinize the PPI interfaces. Moreover, different databases and software tools have been created to predict the peptide structures and their interactions with target protein complexes. High-throughput screening of large peptide libraries against PPIs; "hotspot" identification; structure-based and off-structure approaches of peptide design; 3D peptide modeling; peptide optimization strategies like cyclization; and peptide binding energy evaluation are among the capabilities of in silico tools. In the present study, the most recent advances in the field of in silico approaches for the design of interfering peptides against PPIs will be reviewed. The future perspective of the field and its advantages and limitations will also be pinpointed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zahra Sadat Hashemi
- ATMP Department, Breast Cancer Research Center, Motamed Cancer Institute, Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research, Tehran, Iran
| | - Mahboubeh Zarei
- Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran
| | - Mohsen Karami Fath
- Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran
| | - Mahmoud Ganji
- Department of Medical Biotechnology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
| | - Mahboube Shahrabi Farahani
- Department of Medical Biotechnology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
| | - Fatemeh Afsharnouri
- Department of Medical Biotechnology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
| | - Navid Pourzardosht
- Cellular and Molecular Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, Iran
- Department of Biochemistry, Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, Iran
| | - Bahman Khalesi
- Department of Research and Production of Poultry Viral Vaccine, Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, Agricultural Research Education and Extension Organization, Karaj, Iran
| | - Abolfazl Jahangiri
- Applied Microbiology Research Center, Systems Biology and Poisonings Institute, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
| | - Mohammad Reza Rahbar
- Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran
| | - Saeed Khalili
- Department of Biology Sciences, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran, Iran
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Dequeker C, Laine E, Carbone A. Decrypting protein surfaces by combining evolution, geometry, and molecular docking. Proteins 2019; 87:952-965. [PMID: 31199528 PMCID: PMC6852240 DOI: 10.1002/prot.25757] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2019] [Revised: 05/09/2019] [Accepted: 06/07/2019] [Indexed: 01/30/2023]
Abstract
The growing body of experimental and computational data describing how proteins interact with each other has emphasized the multiplicity of protein interactions and the complexity underlying protein surface usage and deformability. In this work, we propose new concepts and methods toward deciphering such complexity. We introduce the notion of interacting region to account for the multiple usage of a protein's surface residues by several partners and for the variability of protein interfaces coming from molecular flexibility. We predict interacting patches by crossing evolutionary, physicochemical and geometrical properties of the protein surface with information coming from complete cross-docking (CC-D) simulations. We show that our predictions match well interacting regions and that the different sources of information are complementary. We further propose an indicator of whether a protein has a few or many partners. Our prediction strategies are implemented in the dynJET2 algorithm and assessed on a new dataset of 262 protein on which we performed CC-D. The code and the data are available at: http://www.lcqb.upmc.fr/dynJET2/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chloé Dequeker
- Sorbonne Université, CNRS, IBPS, Laboratoire de Biologie Computationnelle et Quantitative (LCQB), Paris, France
| | - Elodie Laine
- Sorbonne Université, CNRS, IBPS, Laboratoire de Biologie Computationnelle et Quantitative (LCQB), Paris, France
| | - Alessandra Carbone
- Sorbonne Université, CNRS, IBPS, Laboratoire de Biologie Computationnelle et Quantitative (LCQB), Paris, France.,Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris, France
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Esmaielbeiki R, Krawczyk K, Knapp B, Nebel JC, Deane CM. Progress and challenges in predicting protein interfaces. Brief Bioinform 2016; 17:117-31. [PMID: 25971595 PMCID: PMC4719070 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbv027] [Citation(s) in RCA: 100] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/29/2015] [Revised: 03/18/2015] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
The majority of biological processes are mediated via protein-protein interactions. Determination of residues participating in such interactions improves our understanding of molecular mechanisms and facilitates the development of therapeutics. Experimental approaches to identifying interacting residues, such as mutagenesis, are costly and time-consuming and thus, computational methods for this purpose could streamline conventional pipelines. Here we review the field of computational protein interface prediction. We make a distinction between methods which address proteins in general and those targeted at antibodies, owing to the radically different binding mechanism of antibodies. We organize the multitude of currently available methods hierarchically based on required input and prediction principles to provide an overview of the field.
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6
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Maheshwari S, Brylinski M. Predicted binding site information improves model ranking in protein docking using experimental and computer-generated target structures. BMC STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY 2015; 15:23. [PMID: 26597230 PMCID: PMC4657198 DOI: 10.1186/s12900-015-0050-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/21/2015] [Accepted: 10/30/2015] [Indexed: 01/10/2023]
Abstract
Background Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) mediate the vast majority of biological processes, therefore, significant efforts have been directed to investigate PPIs to fully comprehend cellular functions. Predicting complex structures is critical to reveal molecular mechanisms by which proteins operate. Despite recent advances in the development of new methods to model macromolecular assemblies, most current methodologies are designed to work with experimentally determined protein structures. However, because only computer-generated models are available for a large number of proteins in a given genome, computational tools should tolerate structural inaccuracies in order to perform the genome-wide modeling of PPIs. Results To address this problem, we developed eRankPPI, an algorithm for the identification of near-native conformations generated by protein docking using experimental structures as well as protein models. The scoring function implemented in eRankPPI employs multiple features including interface probability estimates calculated by eFindSitePPI and a novel contact-based symmetry score. In comparative benchmarks using representative datasets of homo- and hetero-complexes, we show that eRankPPI consistently outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms improving the success rate by ~10 %. Conclusions eRankPPI was designed to bridge the gap between the volume of sequence data, the evidence of binary interactions, and the atomic details of pharmacologically relevant protein complexes. Tolerating structure imperfections in computer-generated models opens up a possibility to conduct the exhaustive structure-based reconstruction of PPI networks across proteomes. The methods and datasets used in this study are available at www.brylinski.org/erankppi.
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Affiliation(s)
- Surabhi Maheshwari
- Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA.
| | - Michal Brylinski
- Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA. .,Center for Computation & Technology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA.
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7
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Surfing the Protein-Protein Interaction Surface Using Docking Methods: Application to the Design of PPI Inhibitors. Molecules 2015; 20:11569-603. [PMID: 26111183 PMCID: PMC6272567 DOI: 10.3390/molecules200611569] [Citation(s) in RCA: 44] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/27/2015] [Revised: 06/02/2015] [Accepted: 06/15/2015] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Blocking protein-protein interactions (PPI) using small molecules or peptides modulates biochemical pathways and has therapeutic significance. PPI inhibition for designing drug-like molecules is a new area that has been explored extensively during the last decade. Considering the number of available PPI inhibitor databases and the limited number of 3D structures available for proteins, docking and scoring methods play a major role in designing PPI inhibitors as well as stabilizers. Docking methods are used in the design of PPI inhibitors at several stages of finding a lead compound, including modeling the protein complex, screening for hot spots on the protein-protein interaction interface and screening small molecules or peptides that bind to the PPI interface. There are three major challenges to the use of docking on the relatively flat surfaces of PPI. In this review we will provide some examples of the use of docking in PPI inhibitor design as well as its limitations. The combination of experimental and docking methods with improved scoring function has thus far resulted in few success stories of PPI inhibitors for therapeutic purposes. Docking algorithms used for PPI are in the early stages, however, and as more data are available docking will become a highly promising area in the design of PPI inhibitors or stabilizers.
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8
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Shih ESC, Hwang MJ. NPPD: A Protein-Protein Docking Scoring Function Based on Dyadic Differences in Networks of Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Amino Acid Residues. BIOLOGY 2015; 4:282-97. [PMID: 25811640 PMCID: PMC4498300 DOI: 10.3390/biology4020282] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/27/2014] [Accepted: 03/16/2015] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Protein-protein docking (PPD) predictions usually rely on the use of a scoring function to rank docking models generated by exhaustive sampling. To rank good models higher than bad ones, a large number of scoring functions have been developed and evaluated, but the methods used for the computation of PPD predictions remain largely unsatisfactory. Here, we report a network-based PPD scoring function, the NPPD, in which the network consists of two types of network nodes, one for hydrophobic and the other for hydrophilic amino acid residues, and the nodes are connected when the residues they represent are within a certain contact distance. We showed that network parameters that compute dyadic interactions and those that compute heterophilic interactions of the amino acid networks thus constructed allowed NPPD to perform well in a benchmark evaluation of 115 PPD scoring functions, most of which, unlike NPPD, are based on some sort of protein-protein interaction energy. We also showed that NPPD was highly complementary to these energy-based scoring functions, suggesting that the combined use of conventional scoring functions and NPPD might significantly improve the accuracy of current PPD predictions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Edward S C Shih
- Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei 115, Taiwan.
| | - Ming-Jing Hwang
- Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei 115, Taiwan.
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Moreira IS, Martins JM, Coimbra JTS, Ramos MJ, Fernandes PA. A new scoring function for protein-protein docking that identifies native structures with unprecedented accuracy. Phys Chem Chem Phys 2014; 17:2378-87. [PMID: 25490550 DOI: 10.1039/c4cp04688a] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
Protein-protein (P-P) 3D structures are fundamental to structural biology and drug discovery. However, most of them have never been determined. Many docking algorithms were developed for that purpose, but they have a very limited accuracy in generating native-like structures and identifying the most correct one, in particular when a single answer is asked for. With such a low success rate it is difficult to point out one docked structure as being native-like. Here we present a new, high accuracy, scoring method to identify the 3D structure of P-P complexes among a set of trial poses. It incorporates alanine scanning mutagenesis experimental data that need to be obtained a priori. The scoring scheme works by matching the computational and the experimental alanine scanning mutagenesis results. The size of the trial P-P interface area is also taken into account. We show that the method ranks the trial structures and identifies the native-like structures with unprecedented accuracy (∼94%), providing the correct P-P 3D structures that biochemists and molecular biologists need to pursue their studies. With such a success rate, the bottleneck of protein-protein docking moves from the scoring to searching algorithms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Irina S Moreira
- REQUIMTE/Departamento de Química e Bioquímica, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre s/n, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal.
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