Piperazine-derived small molecules as potential Flaviviridae NS3 protease inhibitors. In vitro antiviral activity evaluation against Zika and Dengue viruses

Since 2011 Direct Acting antivirals (DAAs) drugs targeting different non-structural (NS) viral proteins (NS3, NS5A or NS5B inhibitors) have been approved for clinical use in HCV therapies. However, currently there are not licensed therapeutics to treat Flavivirus infections and the only licensed DEN...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: García Lozano, María del Rosario, Dragoni, Filippo, Gallego, Paloma, Mazzotta, Sarah, López Gómez, Alejandro, Boccuto, Adele, Martínez-Cortés, Carlos, Rodríguez-Martínez, Alejandro, Pérez-Sánchez, Horacio, Vega Pérez, José Manuel, Del Campo, José Antonio, Vicenti, Ilaria, Vega Holm, Margarita, Iglesias Guerra, Fernando
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/142872
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/142872
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bioorg.2023.106408
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Flavivirus
NS3 protease
Small molecules inhibitors
Privileged structures
Acyl and urea piperazine derivatives
Live virus phenotypic assay
Molecular docking
Molecular modeling
Descripción
Sumario:Since 2011 Direct Acting antivirals (DAAs) drugs targeting different non-structural (NS) viral proteins (NS3, NS5A or NS5B inhibitors) have been approved for clinical use in HCV therapies. However, currently there are not licensed therapeutics to treat Flavivirus infections and the only licensed DENV vaccine, Dengvaxia, is restricted to patients with preexisting DENV immunity. Similarly to NS5 polymerase, the NS3 catalytic region is evolutionarily conserved among the Flaviviridae family sharing strong structural similarity with other proteases belonging to this family and therefore is an attractive target for the development of pan-flavivirus therapeutics. In this work we present a library of 34 piperazine-derived small molecules as potential Flaviviridae NS3 protease inhibitors. The library was developed through a privileged structures-based design and then biologically screened using a live virus phenotypic assay to determine the half-maximal inhibitor concentration (IC50) of each compound against ZIKV and DENV. Two lead compounds, 42 and 44, with promising broad-spectrum activity against ZIKV (IC50 6.6 µM and 1.9 µM respectively) and DENV (IC50 6.7 µM and 1.4 µM respectively) and a good security profile were identified. Besides, molecular docking calculations were performed to provide insights about key interactions with residues in NS3 proteases’ active sites.