Leukemias are neoplasms that affect hematopoietic cells, which are developed by genetic alterations (mutations) that lead to the loss of proliferation control mechanisms (maturation and/or cell death). The α4β1 integrin receptor is a therapeutic target for inflammation, autoimmune diseases and lymphoid tumors. This study was carried out to search through the antagonists-based virtual screening for α4β1 receptor. Initially, seventeen (17) structures were selected (based on the inhibitory activity values, IC50) and the structure with the best value was chosen as the pivot. The pharmacophoric pattern was determined from the online PharmaGist server and resulted in a model of score value equal to 97.940 with 15 pharmacophoric characteristics that were statistically evaluated via Pearson correlations, principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA). A refined model generated four pharmacophoric hypotheses totaling 1.478 structures set of Zinc_database. After, the pharmacokinetic, toxicological and biological activity predictions were realized comparing with pivot structure that resulted in five (ZINC72088291, ZINC68842860, ZINC14365931, ZINC09588345 and ZINC91247798) structures with optimal in silico predictions. Therefore, future studies are needed to confirm antitumor potential activity of molecules selected this work with in vitro and in vivo assays.
About 132 thousand cases of melanoma (more severe type of skin cancer) were registered in 2014 according to the World Health Organization. This type of cancer significantly affects the quality of life of individuals. Caffeine has shown potential inhibitory effect against epithelial cancer. In this study, it was proposed to obtain new caffeine-based molecules with potential epithelial anticancer activity. For this, a training set of 21 molecules was used for pharmacophore perception procedures. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to propose mono-, bi-, tri-, and tetra-parametric models applied in the prediction of the activity. The generated pharmacophore was used to select 350 molecules available at the ZINCpharmer server, followed by reduction to 24 molecules, after selection using the Tanimoto index, yielding 10 molecules after final selection by predicted activity values > 1.5229. These ten mole-cules had better pharmacokinetic properties than the other ones used as reference and within the clinical-ly significant limits. Only two molecules show minor hits of toxicity and were submitted to molecular docking procedures, showing BFE (binding free energy) values lower than the reference values. Statisti-cal analyses indicated strong negative correlations between BFE and pharmacophoric properties (high influence on BFE lowering) and practically null correlation between BFE and BBB. The two most prom-ising molecules can be indicated as candidates for further in vitro and in vivo analyzes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.