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Articles

Identification of potential HIV-1 integrase strand transfer inhibitors: In silico virtual screening and QM/MM docking studies

, , &
Pages 581-595
Received 05 Oct 2012
Accepted 24 Jan 2013
Published online: 25 Mar 2013

HIV-1 integrase (IN) is a retroviral enzyme that catalyses integration of the reverse-transcribed viral DNA into the host genome, which is necessary for efficient viral replication. In this study, we have performed an in silico virtual screening for the identification of potential HIV-1 IN strand transfer (ST) inhibitors. Pharmacophore modelling and atom-based 3D-QSAR studies were carried out for a series of compounds belonging to 3-Hydroxypyrimidine-2,4-diones. Based on the ligand-based pharmacophore model, we obtained a five-point pharmacophore with two hydrogen bond acceptors (A), one hydrogen bond donor (D), one hydrophobic group (H) and one aromatic ring (R) as pharmacophoric features. The pharmacophore hypothesis AADHR was used as a 3D query in a sequential virtual screening study to filter small molecule databases Maybridge, ChemBridge and Asinex. Hits matching with pharmacophore hypothesis AADHR were retrieved and passed progressively through Lipinski’s rule of five filtering, molecular docking and hierarchical clustering. The five compounds with best hits with novel and diverse chemotypes were subjected to QM/MM docking, which showed improved docking accuracy. We further performed molecular dynamics simulation and found three compounds that form stable interactions with key residues. These compounds could be used as a leads for further drug development and rational design of HIV-1 IN inhibitors.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the University Grants Commission (UGC), Department of Science and Technology (DST), and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, India, for financial support. The authors thank Dr. M. Ravikumar (Application Scientist from Schrödinger, Bangalore) for the detailed discussion and suggestions. The suggestions from the anonymous reviewers ware cordially appreciated.

 

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