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Biomedical subjects

Suresh B Singh

Publications and source records attributed to Suresh B Singh.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

The role of tryptophan 1072 in human PDE3B inhibitor binding.

The catalytic domain of recombinant human PDE3B was expressed in Escherichia coli as inclusion bodies and refolded to form active enzyme. A mutation at tryptophan 1072 in PDE3B disrupts inhibitor binding, but has minimal effect on cAMP hydrolysis. The W1072A mutation caused a 158-fold decrease in affinity for cilostamide, a 740-fold decrease for cGMP, and a 15-fold decrease in affinity for IBMX. The corresponding tyrosine mutation had a smaller effect. However, the K(m) of cAMP for the W1072A mutation was only increased by about 7-fold. The data indicate that the inhibitor binding region is not completely coincident with the substrate binding region. The homologous residue in PDE4B is located on helix 16 within 7A of the predicted bound substrate. A model of PDE3B was constructed based on the X-ray crystal structure of PDE4B.

1-Methyl-3-isobutylxanthine↗

A model for predicting likely sites of CYP3A4-mediated metabolism on drug-like molecules.

We have developed a rapid semiquantitative model for evaluating the relative susceptibilities of different sites on drug molecules to metabolism by cytochrome P450 3A4. The model is based on the energy necessary to remove a hydrogen radical from each site, plus the surface area exposure of the hydrogen atom. The energy of hydrogen radical abstraction is conventionally measured by AM1 semiempirical molecular orbital calculations. AM1 calculations show the following order of radical stabilities for the hydrogen atom abstractions: sp2 centers > heteroatom sp3 centers > carbon sp3 centers. Since AM1 calculations are too time intensive for routine work, we developed a statistical trend vector model, which is used to estimate the AM1 abstraction energy of a hydrogen atom from its local atomic environment. We carried out AM1 and trend vector calculations on 50 CYP3A4 substrates whose major sites of metabolism are known in the literature. A plot of the lowest hydrogen radical formation energy versus its sterically accessible surface area exposure for these 50 substrates shows that only those hydrogen atoms with solvent accessible surface area exposure > or = 8.0 A(2) are susceptible to CYP3A4-mediated metabolism. This approach forms the basis for our general model, which predicts sites on drugs that are susceptible to cytochrome P450 3A4-mediated hydrogen radical abstraction followed by a hydroxylation reaction. This model, in conjunction with specific enzyme site binding requirements, can aid in identifying possible sites of metabolism catalyzed by other cytochrome P450 enzymes.

Binding Sites↗

p38MAP kinase inhibitors. Part 1: design and development of a new class of potent and highly selective inhibitors based on 3,4-dihydropyrido[3,2-d]pyrimidone scaffold.

A new class of p38 antagonists based on 3,4-dihydropyrido[3,2,-d]pyrimidine scaffold has been developed. These inhibitors exhibit unprecedented selectivity towards p38 over other very closely related kinases. Compounds 25, 33, and 34 were identified as benchmark analogues for follow-up studies. They show good potency for enzyme inhibition and excellent functional activity.

Drug Design↗

A simple method for visualizing the differences between related receptor sites.

Pastor and Cruciani [J. Med. Chem. 38 (1995) 4637] and Kastenholz et al. [J. Med. Chem. 43 (2000) 3033] pioneered methods for comparing related receptors, with the ultimate goal of designing selective ligands. Such methods start with a reasonable superposition of high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) structures of the receptors. Next, molecular field maps are calculated for each receptor. Then the maps are analyzed to determine which map features are correlated with a particular subset of receptors. We present a method FLOGTV, based on the trend vector paradigm [J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. 25 (1985) 64] to perform the analysis. This is mathematically simpler than the GRID/CPCA method of Kastenholz et al. and allows for the simultaneous comparison of many receptor structures. Also, the trend vector paradigm provides a method of selecting isopotential contours that are well above "noise". We demonstrate the method on four examples: HIV proteases versus two-domain acid proteases, thrombin versus trypsin and factor Xa, bacterial dihydrofolate reductases (DHFRs) versus vertebrate DHFRs, and P38 versus ERK protein kinases.

Animals↗

Toxoplasma gondii cyclic GMP-dependent kinase: chemotherapeutic targeting of an essential parasite protein kinase.

The trisubstituted pyrrole 4-[2-(4-fluorophenyl)-5-(1-methylpiperidine-4-yl)-1H-pyrrol-3-yl]pyridine (compound 1) has in vivo activity against the apicomplexan parasites Toxoplasma gondii and Eimeria tenella in animal models. The presumptive molecular target of this compound in E. tenella is cyclic GMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG). Native PKG purified from T. gondii has kinetic and pharmacologic properties similar to those of the E. tenella homologue, and both have been functionally expressed as recombinant proteins in T. gondii. Computer modeling of parasite PKG was used to predict catalytic site amino acid residues that interact with compound 1. The recombinant laboratory-generated mutants T. gondii PKG T761Q or T761M and the analogous E. tenella T770 alleles have reduced binding affinity for, and are not inhibited by, compound 1. By all other criteria, PKG with this class of catalytic site substitution is indistinguishable from wild-type enzyme. A genetic disruption of T. gondii PKG can only be achieved if a complementing copy of PKG is provided in trans, arguing that PKG is an essential protein. Strains of T. gondii, disrupted at the genomic PKG locus and dependent upon the T. gondii T761-substituted PKGs, are as virulent as wild type in mice. However, unlike mice infected with wild-type T. gondii that are cured by compound 1, mice infected with the laboratory-generated strains of T. gondii do not respond to treatment. We conclude that PKG represents the primary molecular target responsible for the antiparasitic efficacy of compound 1.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

A simple method for visualizing the differences between related receptor sites.

Pastor and Cruciani [J. Med. Chem. 38 (1995) 4637] and Kastenholz et al. [J. Med. Chem. 43 (2000) 3033] pioneered methods for comparing related receptors, with the ultimate goal of designing selective ligands. Such methods start with a reasonable superposition of high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) structures of the receptors. Next, molecular field maps are calculated for each receptor. Then the maps are analyzed to determine which map features are correlated with a particular subset of receptors. We present a method FLOGTV, based on the trend vector paradigm [J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. 25 (1985) 64] to perform the analysis. This is mathematically simpler than the GRID/CPCA method of Kastenholz et al. and allows for the simultaneous comparison of many receptor structures. Also, the trend vector paradigm provides a method of selecting isopotential contours that are well above "noise". We demonstrate the method on four examples: HIV proteases versus two-domain acid proteases, thrombin versus trypsin and factor Xa, bacterial dihydrofolate reductases (DHFRs) versus vertebrate DHFRs, and P38 versus ERK protein kinases.

Algorithms↗

CKB - the compound knowledge base: a text based chemical search system.

The Compound Knowledge Base (CKB) was developed as a means of locating structures and additional relevant information from a given known structural identifier. Any of Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number, company code (code number the producing company refers to the chemical entity internally), generic name (trivial or class name), or trade name (name under which the compound is marketed) can be provided as a query. CKB will provide the remaining available information as well as the corresponding structure for any matching compound in the database. The interface to the Compound Knowledge Base is Internet/World Wide Web-based, using Netscape Navigator and the ChemDraw Pro Plugin, which allows Merck scientists quick and easy access to the database from their desktop. The design and implementation of the database and the search interface are herein detailed.

Journal Article↗

Text Influenced Molecular Indexing (TIMI): a literature database mining approach that handles text and chemistry.

We present an application of a novel methodology called Text Influenced Molecular Indexing (TIMI) to mine the information in the scientific literature. TIMI is an extension of two existing methodologies: (1) Latent Semantic Structure Indexing (LaSSI), a method for calculating chemical similarity using two-dimensional topological descriptors, and (2) Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), a method for generating correlations between textual terms. The singular value decomposition (SVD) of a feature/object matrix is the fundamental mathematical operation underlying LSI, LaSSI, and TIMI and is used in the identification of associations between textual and chemical descriptors. We present the results of our studies with a database containing 11,571 PubMed/MEDLINE abstracts which show the advantages of merging textual and chemical descriptors over using either text or chemistry alone. Our work demonstrates that searching text-only databases limits retrieved documents to those that explicitly mention compounds by name in the text. Similarly, searching chemistry-only databases can only retrieve those documents that have chemical structures in them. TIMI, however, enables search and retrieval of documents with textual, chemical, and/or text- and chemistry-based queries. Thus, the TIMI system offers a powerful new approach to uncovering the contextual scientific knowledge sought by the medical research community.

Algorithms↗