Virtual Winter School on Computational Chemistry
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Medicinal Chemistry, Research Center for Natural Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
Covalent drugs are electrophilic molecules that bound to the target protein by forming covalent bond with the targeted nucleophilic residue at the binding site. Formerly, covalent inhibitors were typically filtered out in drug discovery programs due to the risk of off-target activity attributed to their reactivity. Few compounds acting by covalent mechanism of action were discovered serendipitously. However, a paradigm change has occurred around the millennium owing to the recognition of distinct therapeutic advantages of covalent inhibition that include potentially full target occupancy and long-action, decoupling pharmacodynamics from pharmacokinetics. Therefore, the rational design of targeted covalent inhibitors (TCIs) has gained increased attention.
The binding of covalent inhibitors follows a two-step mechanism including the first non-covalent binding stage that is the molecular recognition of the non-covalent scaffold. Then the electrophilic functionality of the inhibitor, called warhead reacts with the targeted nucleophilic sidechain of the protein. Here I would focus both steps at two different levels. First I discuss virtual screening applications that allow the prioritization of compounds for experimental testing. After the evaluation of available covalent docking tools [1] we developed new methodologies that allow warhead independent docking of potential covalent inhibitors [2-4]. Next I turned to the accurate prediction of the binding free energy of covalent inhibitors by QM/MM calculations [5]. This approach allows the investigation of the molecular mechanism of action that together with the thermodynamic characterisation facilitate the design of potent covalent inhibitors [6,7].
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Virtual Winter School on Computational Chemistry
