Molecular Docking, Molecular Dynamics Simulations, and Free Energy Calculation Insights into the Binding Mechanism between VS-4718 and Focal Adhesion Kinase.

Focal adhesion kinase (FAK) is a 125 kDa nonreceptor tyrosine kinase that plays an important role in many carcinomas. Thus, the targeting of FAK by small molecules is considered to be promising for cancer therapy. Some FAK inhibitors have been reported as potential anticancer drugs and have entered into clinical development; for example, VS-4718 is currently undergoing clinical trials. However, the lack of crystal structural data for the binding of VS-4718 with FAK has hindered the optimization of this anticancer agent. In this work, the VS-4718/FAK interaction model was obtained by molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations. The binding free energies of VS-4718/FAK were also calculated using the molecular mechanics generalized Born surface area method. It was found that the aminopyrimidine group formed hydrogen bonds with the C502 residue of the hinge loop, while the D564 residue of the T-loop interacted with the amide group. In addition, I428, A452, V484, M499, G505, and L553 residues formed hydrophobic interactions with VS-4718. The obtained results therefore provide an improved understanding of the interaction between human FAK and VS-4718. Based on the obtained binding mechanism, 47 novel compounds were designed to target the adenosine 5'-triphosphate-binding pocket of human FAK, and ensemble docking was performed to assess the effects of these modifications on the inhibitor binding affinity. This work is also expected to provide additional insights into potential future target design strategies based on VS-4718.

Highly Enantioselective Synthesis and Anticancer Activities of Chiral Conjugated Diynols.

A chiral amino alcohol based ligand was found to promote the highly enantioselective addition of terminal conjugated diynes to aromatic and aliphatic aldehydes. The combination of easily available C2 -symmetric (R)- and (S)-BINOL with Ti(OiPr)4 , Zn powder, and EtI was also found to catalyze the asymmetric addition of 1,3-diynes to aldehydes under mild reaction conditions, and thus, both enantiomers of the chiral conjugated diynols could be prepared with high enantioselectivities. The resulting optically active conjugated diynols were found to have potential anticancer activities with significant differences against HepG2 and HeLa cancer cells, and remarkable enantioselective cytotoxicity was observed for the first time.

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry/selected ion monitoring for screening asymmetric epoxidation of styrene.

A screening method by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) with selected ion monitoring (SIM) has been developed for asymmetric epoxidation of styrene. All samples were analyzed by GC-MS with the mode of SIM by using ethylbenzene as the internal standard, by which styrene and styrene epoxide enantiomers were completely separated and their concentrations were accurately determined. Furthermore, this method was used to evaluate the epoxidation reaction of styrene, which was optimized by orthogonal experiment. The advantages of the method are as follows: excellent precision (RSD in the range of 1. 2% - 5. 2%, n= 5), good linearity (the correlation coefficients for styrene, (R)/(S)-styrene oxide were 0. 9997, 0. 9932 and 0. 9963, respectively) , low limits of quantitation (LOQs of styrene, (R)/(S)-styrene oxide were 1. 3, 1. 1 and 0. 7 mg/L, respectively) and reasonable recoveries (98. 2% - 108. 2%). All in all, the method provided a new way to determine the asymmetric epoxidation mixture of styrene and its homologs.

(S)-2-(1H-Imidazol-1-yl)-3-phenyl-propanol.

In the title compound, C(12)H(14)N(2)O, the middle C atom in the propanol chain is a chiral center and possesses an S absolute configuration, according to the synthesis. In the crystal structure, inter-molecular O-H⋯N hydrogen bonds link the mol-ecules into a chain along the b axis.