Exploring the Conformational Landscape of Bioactive Small Molecules

By using a combination of classical Hamiltonian replica exchange with high-level quantum mechanical calculations on more than one hundred drug-like molecules, we explored here the energy cost associated with binding of drug-like molecules to target macromolecules. We found that, in general, the drug...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Zivanovic, Sanja, Colizzi, Francesco, Moreno Fajardo, David Fernando, Hospital Gasch, Adam, Soliva, Robert, Orozco López, Modesto
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/179129
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/179129
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Teoria quàntica
Molècules
Química combinatòria
Quantum theory
Molecules
Combinatorial chemistry
Descripción
Sumario:By using a combination of classical Hamiltonian replica exchange with high-level quantum mechanical calculations on more than one hundred drug-like molecules, we explored here the energy cost associated with binding of drug-like molecules to target macromolecules. We found that, in general, the drug-like molecules present bound to proteins in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) can access easily the bioactive conformation and in fact for 73% of the studied molecules the bioactiveconformation is within 3kBT from the most-stable conformation in solution as determined by DFT/SCRF calculations. Cases with large differences between the most-stable and the bioactive conformations appear in ligands recognized by ionic contacts, or very large structures establishing many favorable interactions with the protein. There are also a few cases where we observed a non-negligible uncertainty related to the experimental structure deposited in PDB. Remarkably, the rough automatic force field used here provides reasonable estimates of the conformational ensemble of drugs in solution. The outlined protocol can be used to better estimate the cost of adopting the bioactive conformation.