Screen of pseudopeptidic inhibitors of human sirtuins 1-3: two lead compounds with antiproliferative effects in cancer cells.

In the past few years sirtuins have gained growing attention for their involvement in many biological processes such as cellular metabolism, apoptosis, aging and inflammation. In this contribution, we report the synthesis of a library of thioacetylated pseudopeptides that were screened against human sirtuins 1-3 to reveal their in vitro inhibition activities. Molecular modeling studies were performed to acquire data about the binding modes of the inhibitors. Three sirtuin inhibitors were subjected to cellular studies, and all of them showed an increase in acetylation of Lys382 of p53 after DNA damage. Furthermore, two of the compounds were able to inhibit both A549 lung carcinoma and MCF-7 breast carcinoma cell growth in micromolar concentration with the ability to arrest cancer cell cycle in the G1 phase.

Identification of novel SIRT3 inhibitor scaffolds by virtual screening.

SIRT3 is a member of the sirtuin family of histone deacetylases. It is a mitochondrial protein, which has an important role in metabolic homeostasis but it may also act as a tumor suppressor or promoter. Increased SIRT3 transcription has been associated with node-positive breast cancer and oral squamous cell carcinoma. To identify novel SIRT3 inhibitors we have established a virtual screening workflow by using shape-based filtering and flexible docking protocol. The Chembridge database was screened and 40 molecules were selected and tested in an in vitro assay. Two novel scaffolds were identified among the tested hits. The 5-amino-2-phenyl-benzoxazole scaffold was selected for further structure-activity studies and a series of its analogs was tested. The SIRT3 inhibition for this series ranged between 13% and 71%.

Structure-based design of pseudopeptidic inhibitors for SIRT1 and SIRT2.

The lack of substrate-bound crystal structures of SIRT1 and SIRT2 complicates the drug design for these targets. In this work, we aim to study whether SIRT3 could serve as a target structure in the design of substrate based pseudopeptidic inhibitors of SIRT1 and SIRT2. We created a binding hypothesis for pseudopeptidic inhibitors, synthesized a series of inhibitors, and studied how well the fulfillment of the binding criteria proposed by the hypothesis correlated with the in vitro inhibitory activities. The chosen approach was further validated by studying docking results between 12 different SIRT3, Sir2Tm, SIRT1 and SIRT2 X-ray structures and homology models in different conformational forms. It was concluded that the created binding hypothesis can be used in the design of the substrate based inhibitors of SIRT1 and SIRT2 although there are some reservations, and it is better to use the substrate-bound structure of SIRT3 instead of the available apo-SIRT2 as the target structure.

The effect of ligand-based tautomer and protomer prediction on structure-based virtual screening.

As tautomerism and ionization may significantly change the interaction possibilities between a ligand and a target protein, these phenomena could have an effect on structure-based virtual screening. Tautomeric- and protonation-state enumeration ensures that the state with optimal interaction possibilities is included in the screening process, as the predicted state may not always be the optimal binder. However, there is very little information published if tautomer and protomer enumeration actually improves the enrichment of active molecules compared to the alternative of using a predicted form of each molecule. In this study, a retrospective virtual screening was performed using AutoDock on 19 drug targets with a publicly available data set. It is proposed that tautomer and protomer prediction can significantly save computing resources and can yield similar results to enumeration.

Characterization of the binding properties of SIRT2 inhibitors with a N-(3-phenylpropenoyl)-glycine tryptamide backbone.

SIRT2 inhibitors with a N-(3-phenylpropenoyl)-glycine tryptamide backbone were studied. This backbone has been developed in our group, and it is derived from a compound originally found by virtual screening. In addition, compounds with a smaller 3-phenylpropenoic acid tryptamide backbone were also included in the study. Binding modes for the new compounds and the previously reported compounds were analyzed with molecular modelling methods. The approach, which included a combination of molecular dynamics, molecular docking and cluster analysis, showed that certain docking poses were favourable despite the conformational variation in the target protein. The N-(3-phenylpropenoyl)-glycine tryptamide backbone is also a good backbone for SIRT2 inhibitors, and the series of compounds includes several potent SIRT2 inhibitors.

N,N'-Bisbenzylidenebenzene-1,4-diamines and N,N'-Bisbenzylidenenaphthalene-1,4-diamines as Sirtuin Type 2 (SIRT2) Inhibitors.

A series of N,N'-bisbenzylidenebenzene-1,4-diamine and N,N'-bisbenzylidenenaphthalene-1,4-diamine derivatives were synthesized as inhibitors for human sirtuin type 2 (SIRT2). The design of the new compounds was based on two earlier reported hits from molecular modeling and virtual screening. The most potent compound was N,N'-bis(2-hydroxybenzylidene)benzene-1,4-diamine, which was equipotent with the most potent hit compound and well-known SIRT2 inhibitor sirtinol.