Fragment-based drug design of nature-inspired compounds


Najjar A., Olğaç A., Ntie-Kang F., Sippl W.

in: Chemoinformatics of Natural Products: Advanced Concepts and Applications, Fidele Ntie-Kang, Editor, Walter de Gruyter, Inc. , Berlin, pp.77-98, 2021

  • Publication Type: Book Chapter / Chapter Research Book
  • Publication Date: 2021
  • Publisher: Walter de Gruyter, Inc.
  • City: Berlin
  • Page Numbers: pp.77-98
  • Editors: Fidele Ntie-Kang, Editor
  • Gazi University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Natural product (NP)-derived drugs can be extracts, biological macromolecules, or purified small molecule substances. Small molecule drugs can be originally purified from NPs, can represent semisynthetic molecules, natural fragments containing small molecules, or are fully synthetic molecules that mimic natural compounds. New semisynthetic NP-like drugs are entering the pharmaceutical market almost every year and reveal growing interests in the application of fragment-based approaches for NPs. Thus, several NP databases were constructed to be implemented in the fragmentbased drug design (FBDD) workflows. FBDD has been established previously as an approach for hit identification and lead generation. Several biophysical and computational methods are used for fragment screening to identify potential hits. Once the fragments within the binding pocket of the protein are identified, they can be grown, linked, or merged to design more active compounds. This work discusses applications of NPs and NP scaffolds to FBDD. Moreover, it briefly reviews NP databases containing fragments and reports on case studies where the approach has been successfully applied for the design of antimalarial and anticancer drug candidates.