Title:Drug Repurposing Using Similarity-based Target Prediction, Docking Studies and Scaffold Hopping of Lefamulin
Volume: 18
Issue: 7
Author(s): Shikha Sharma, Shweta Sharma, Vaishali Pathak, Parwinder Kaur and Rajesh Kumar Singh*
Affiliation:
- Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Shivalik College of Pharmacy, Nangal, Rupnagar, Punjab 140126,India
Keywords:
Drug repurposing, synthetic accessibility, lefamulin, in silico, renin, PAINS, ADME.
Abstract:
Aim: To investigate and validate the potential target proteins for drug repurposing of
newly FDA approved antibacterial drug.
Background: Drug repurposing is the process of assigning indications for drugs other than the
one(s) that they were initially developed for. Discovery of entirely new indications from already
approved drugs is highly lucrative as it minimizes the pipeline of the drug development process by
reducing time and cost. In silico driven technologies have made it possible to analyze molecules for
different target proteins which are not yet explored.
Objective: To analyze possible target proteins for drug repurposing of lefamulin and their validation.
Also, in silico prediction of novel scaffolds from lefamulin has been performed for assisting
medicinal chemists in future drug design.
Methods: A similarity-based prediction tool was employed for predicting target protein and further
investigated using docking studies on PDB ID: 2V16. Besides, various in silico tools were employed
for the prediction of novel scaffolds from lefamulin using scaffold hopping technique followed
by evaluation with various in silico parameters viz., ADME, synthetic accessibility and
PAINS.
Results: Based on the similarity and target prediction studies, renin is found as the most probable
target protein for lefamulin. Further, validation studies using docking of lefamulin revealed the
significant interactions of lefamulin with the binding pocket of the target protein. Also, three novel
scaffolds were predicted using the scaffold hopping technique and found to be in the limit to reduce
the chances of drug failure in the physiological system during the last stage approval process.
Conclusion: In the future, lefamulin may assist in the development of the renin inhibitors, and also,
three possible novel scaffolds with a good pharmacokinetic profile can be developed into renin
inhibitors and for bacterial infections.