Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: EC:1.5.1.3 (dihydrofolate reductase)
 5,819 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Nineteen previously undescribed 2,4-diamino-6-(arylmethyl)-5,6,7, 8-tetrahydroquinazolines (5a-m, 10-12) were synthesized as part of a larger effort to assess the therapeutic potential of lipophilic dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) inhibitors against opportunistic infections of AIDS. Condensation of appropriately substituted (arylmethyl)triphenylphosphoranes with 4, 4-ethylenedioxycyclohexanone, followed by hydrogenation (H2/Pd-C) and acidolysis, yielded the corresponding 4-(arylmethyl)cyclohexanones, which were then condensed with cyanoguanidine to form the tetrahydroquinazolines. Three simple 2, 4-diamino-6-alkyl-5,6,7,8-tetrahydroquinazoline model compounds (9a-c) were also prepared in one step from commercially available 4-alkylcyclohexanones by this method. Enzyme inhibition assays against rat liver DHFR, Pneumocystis carinii DHFR, and the bifunctional DHFR-TS enzyme from Toxoplasma gondii were carried out, and the selectivity ratios IC50(rat)/IC50(P. carinii) and IC50(rat)/IC50(T. gondii) were compared. The three most potent inhibitors of P. carinii DHFR were the 2,5-dimethoxybenzyl (5j), 3, 4-dimethoxybenzyl (5k), and 3,4,5-trimethoxybenzyl (5l) analogues, with IC50 values of 0.057, 0.10, and 0.091 microM, respectively. The remaining compounds generally had IC50 values in the 0.1-1.0 microM range. However all the compounds were more potent against the rat liver enzyme than the P. carinii enzyme and thus were nonselective. The T. gondii enzyme was always more sensitive than the P. carinii enzyme, with most of the analogues giving IC50 values of 0.01-0.1 microM. Moderate 5-10-fold selectivity for T. gondii versus rat liver DHFR was observed with five compounds, the best combination of potency and selectivity being achieved with the 2-methoxybenzyl analogue 5d, which had an IC50 of 0.014 microM and a selectivity ratio of 8.6. One compound (5l) was tested for antiproliferative activity against P. carinii trophozoites in culture at a concentration of 10 microgram/mL and was found to completely suppress growth over 7 days. The suppressive effect of 5l was the same as that of trimethoprim (10 microgram/mL) + sulfamethoxazole (250 microgram/mL), a standard clinical combination for the treatment of P. carinii pneumonia in AIDS patients. Four compounds (5a,h,k,l) were tested against T. gondii tachyzoites in culture and were found to have a potency (IC50 = 0.1-0.5 microM) similar to that of pyrimethamine (IC50 = 0.69 microM), a standard clinical agent for the treatment of cerebral toxoplasmosis in AIDS patients. Compound 5h was also active against T. gondii infection in mice when given qdx8 by peritoneal injection at doses ranging from 62.5 (initial dose) to 25 mg/kg. Survival was prolonged to the same degree as with 25 mg/kg clindamycin, another widely used drug against toxoplasmosis. Three compounds (5j-l) were tested for antiproliferative activity against human tumor cells in culture. Among the 25 cell lines in the National Cancer Institute panel for which data were confirmed in two independent experiments, the IC50 for at least two of these compounds was <10 microM against 17 cell lines (68%) and in the 0. 1-1 microM range against 13 cell lines (52%). One compound (5j) had an IC50 of <0.01 microM against four of the cell lines. The activity profiles of 5k,l were generally similar to that of 5j except that there were no cells against which the IC50 was <0.01 microM.
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PMID:Synthesis and antiparasitic and antitumor activity of 2, 4-diamino-6-(arylmethyl)-5,6,7,8-tetrahydroquinazoline analogues of piritrexim. 1009 Jul 84

Structural data are reported for N-(2,4-diaminopteridin-6-yl)methyldibenz[b,f]azepine (PT653), an example of structure-based inhibitor design with 21-fold selectivity for Pneumocystis carinii dihydrofolate reductase (pcDHFR) relative to rat liver dihydrofolate reductase (rlDHFR). These data test the hypothesis that 2,4-diaminopteridines with a bulky N,N-diarylaminomethyl side chain at the 6-position could fit better into the larger active site of pcDHFR than into that of mammalian DHFR. The crystal structure of the ternary complex of NADPH, PT653 and pcDHFR, refined to 2.4 A resolution, reveals that PT653 binds in a different orientation than predicted from modeling studies reported previously [Rosowsky et al. (1999), J. Med. Chem. 42, 4853-4860]. These crystal data show that the pteridine-ring plane is tilted compared with that observed in the crystal structure of the pcDHFR methotrexate (MTX) NADPH ternary complex used as a template to model PT653 binding. Also, as a result of this tilt, the dibenzoazepine ring is bound deeper into the p-aminobenzoyl folate binding pocket of pcDHFR, thereby relieving close intermolecular contacts predicted from the modeling data. By far the most significant structural change, but more subtle in magnitude, is the ligand-induced conformational shift of 1.2 A away from the inhibitor of residues 61-66 in helix C. The other major effect is the unwinding of the short helical segment involving loop 47 which has a different conformation to that observed in other pcDHFR complexes [Cody et al. (1999), Biochemistry, 38, 4303-4312]. The favorable pcDHFR selectivity of PT653 could be a result of ligand-induced fit of the large hydrophobic dibenzazepine ring which occupies regions of the enzyme active site not probed by other antifolates and which take advantage of sequence and conformational differences between the structures of human and pcDHFR. These data suggest that such hydrophobic analogs could be used as lead compounds in the design of more pcDHFR-selective antifolates. Enzyme inhibition data also show that PT653 is 102-fold selective for Toxoplasma gondii (tg) DHFR relative to rlDHFR. Homology-modeling studies of the tgDHFR structure suggest that differences in ligand-binding orientation and enzyme sequence could influence the enhanced selectivity of PT653 for tgDHFR.
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PMID:Structure-based enzyme inhibitor design: modeling studies and crystal structure analysis of Pneumocystis carinii dihydrofolate reductase ternary complex with PT653 and NADPH. 1203 96

Drug resistance resulting from mutations to the target is an unfortunate common phenomenon that limits the lifetime of many of the most successful drugs. In contrast to the investigation of mutations after clinical exposure, it would be powerful to be able to incorporate strategies early in the development process to predict and overcome the effects of possible resistance mutations. Here we present a unique prospective application of an ensemble-based protein design algorithm, K*, to predict potential resistance mutations in dihydrofolate reductase from Staphylococcus aureus using positive design to maintain catalytic function and negative design to interfere with binding of a lead inhibitor. Enzyme inhibition assays show that three of the four highly-ranked predicted mutants are active yet display lower affinity (18-, 9-, and 13-fold) for the inhibitor. A crystal structure of the top-ranked mutant enzyme validates the predicted conformations of the mutated residues and the structural basis of the loss of potency. The use of protein design algorithms to predict resistance mutations could be incorporated in a lead design strategy against any target that is susceptible to mutational resistance.
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PMID:Predicting resistance mutations using protein design algorithms. 2064 59

Enzyme inhibition plays an important role in drug development, metabolic pathway regulation, and biocatalysis with product inhibition. When an inhibitor has high structural similarities to the substrate of an enzyme, controlling inhibitor binding without affecting enzyme substrate binding is often challenging and requires fine-tuning of the active site. We hypothesize that an extended set of genetically encoded amino acids can be used to design an enzyme active site that reduces enzyme inhibitor binding without compromising substrate binding. As a model case, we chose murine dihydrofolate reductase (mDHFR), substrate dihydrofolate, and inhibitor methotrexate. Structural models of mDHFR variants containing non-natural amino acids complexed with each ligand were constructed to identify a key residue for inhibitor binding and non-natural amino acids to replace the key residue. Then, we discovered that replacing the key phenylalanine residue with two phenylalanine analogs (p-bromophenylalanine (pBrF) and L-2-naphthylalanine (2Nal)) enhances binding affinity toward the substrate dihydrofolate over the inhibitor by 4.0 and 5.8-fold, respectively. Such an enhanced selectivity is mainly due to a reduced inhibitor binding affinity by 2.1 and 4.3-fold, respectively. The catalytic efficiency of the mDHFR variant containing pBrF is comparable to that of wild-type mDHFR, whereas the mDHFR variant containing 2Nal exhibits a moderate decrease in the catalytic efficiency. The work described here clearly demonstrates the feasibility of selectively controlling enzyme inhibition using an expanded set of genetically encoded amino acids.
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PMID:Controlling enzyme inhibition using an expanded set of genetically encoded amino acids. 2356 7