Peptide Inhibitors of West Nile NS3 Protease: SAR Study of Tetrapeptide Aldehyde Inhibitors

Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2006 papers

Abstract

A series of inhibitors related to the benzoyl-norleucine-lysine-arginine-arginine (Bz-nKRR) tetrapeptide aldehyde was synthesized. When evaluated against the West Nile virus (WNV) NS3 protease, the measured IC(50) ranges from approximately 1 to 200 microM. Concurrently, a modeling study using the recently published crystal structure of the West Nile NS3/NS2B protease complex (pdb code 2FP7) was conducted. We found that the crystal structure is relevant in explaining the observed SAR for this series of tetrapeptides, with the S1 and S2 pockets being the key peptide recognition sites. In general, a residue capable of both pi-stacking and hydrogen bonding is favored in the S1 pocket, while a positively charged residue is preferred in the S2 pocket. This study not only confirms the importance of the NS2B domain in substrate-based inhibitor binding of WNV, it also suggests that the crystal structure would provide useful guidance in the drug discovery process of related Flavivirus proteases, given the high degree of homology.

Related Papers

• → Structure-Based Design, Synthesis, and Evaluation of Peptide-Mimetic SARS 3CL Protease Inhibitors(2011)106 cited
• → Discovery and design of cyclic peptides as dengue virus inhibitors through structure-based molecular docking(2014)17 cited
• → Structure-based design of a novel series of azetidine inhibitors of the hepatitis C virus NS3/4A serine protease(2014)13 cited
• → Synthesis of [Tyr-5-Ψ(CH2NMe)-Tyr-6]RA-VII, a reduced peptide bond analogue of RA-VII, an antitumor bicyclic hexapeptide(2012)3 cited
• → Amino-acids and peptides. Part XVII. Synthesis of cyclo-[(O-t-butyl)-L-seryl-β-alanyl-glycyl-(O-methyl)-L-β-aspartyl], and observations on the rearrangement of β-aspartyl peptide esters(1976)3 cited