ACID: a free tool for drug repurposing using consensus inverse docking strategy.

Drug repurposing offers a promising alternative to dramatically shorten the process of traditional de novo development of a drug. These efforts leverage the fact that a single molecule can act on multiple targets and could be beneficial to indications where the additional targets are relevant. Hence, extensive research efforts have been directed toward developing drug based computational approaches. However, many drug based approaches are known to incur low successful rates, due to incomplete modeling of drug-target interactions. There are also many technical limitations to transform theoretical computational models into practical use. Drug based approaches may, thus, still face challenges for drug repurposing task. Upon this challenge, we developed a consensus inverse docking (CID) workflow, which has a ~ 10% enhancement in success rate compared with current best method. Besides, an easily accessible web server named auto in silico consensus inverse docking (ACID) was designed based on this workflow (http://chemyang.ccnu.edu.cn/ccb/server/ACID).

Synthesis, Herbicidal Activity, and QSAR of Novel N-Benzothiazolyl- pyrimidine-2,4-diones as Protoporphyrinogen Oxidase Inhibitors.

Protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO, E.C. 1.3.3.4) is known as a key action target for several structurally diverse herbicides. As a continuation of our research work on the development of new PPO-inhibiting herbicides, a series of novel 3-(2'-halo-5'-substituted-benzothiazol-1'-yl)-1-methyl-6-(trifluoromethyl)pyrimidine-2,4-diones 9 were designed and synthesized. The bioassay results indicated that a number of the newly synthesized compounds exhibited higher inhibition activity against tobacco PPO (mtPPO) than the controls, saflufenacil and sulfentrazone. Compound 9F-5 was identified as the most potent inhibitor with a Ki value of 0.0072 µM against mtPPO, showing about 4.2-fold and 1.4-fold higher potency than sulfentrazone (Ki = 0.03 µM) and saflufenacil (Ki = 0.01 µM), respectively. An additional green house assay demonstrated that compound 9F-6 (Ki = 0.012 µM) displayed the most promising postemergence herbicidal activity with a broad spectrum even at a concentration as low as 37.5 g of active ingredient (ai)/ha. Maize exhibits relative tolerance against compound 9F-6 at the dosage of 150 g ai/ha, but it is susceptible to saflufenacil even at 75 g ai/ha. Thus, compound 9F-6 exhibits the potential to be a new herbicide for weed control in maize fields.