BackgroundObesity is a progressive metabolic disorder in the current world population, and is characterized by the excess deposition of fat in the adipose tissue. Pancreatic lipase is one of the key enzymes in the hydrolysis of triglycerides into monoglycerides and free fatty acids, and is thus considered a promising target for the treatment of obesity. The present drugs used for treating obesity do not give satisfactory results, and on prolonged usage result in severe side effects. In view of the drastic increase in the obese population day-to-day, there is a greater need to discover new drugs with lesser side effects.Materials and methodsHigh-throughput virtual screening combined with e-pharmacophore screening and ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion) and PAINS (pan-assay interference compounds) filters were applied to screen out the ligand molecules from the ZINC natural molecule database. The screened molecules were subjected to Glide XP docking to study the molecular interactions broadly. Further, molecular dynamic simulations were used to validate the stability of the enzyme–ligand complexes. Finally, the molecules with better results were optimized for in vitro testing.ResultsThe screening protocols identified eight hits from the natural molecule database, which were further filtered through pharmacological filters. The final four hits were subjected to extra precision docking, and the complexes were finally studied with molecular dynamic simulations. The results pointed to the zinc 85893731 molecule as the most stable in the binding pocket, producing consistent H-bond interaction with Ser152 (G=−7.18). The optimized lead molecule exhibited good docking score, better fit, and improved ADME profile.ConclusionThe present study specifies zinc 85893731 as a lead molecule with higher binding score and energetically stable complex with pancreatic lipase. This lead molecule, along with its various analogs, can be further tested as a novel inhibitor against pancreatic lipase using in vitro protocols.

Increase in obesity rates and obesity associated health issues became one of the greatest health concerns in the present world population. With alarming increase in obese percentage there is a need to design new drugs related to the obesity targets. Among the various targets linked to obesity, pancreatic lipase was one of the promising targets for obesity treatment. Using the in silico methods like structure based virtual screening, QikProp, docking studies and binding energy calculations three molecules namely zinc85531017, zinc95919096 and zinc33963788 from the natural database were reported as the potential inhibitors for the pancreatic lipase. Among them zinc95919096 presented all the interactions matching to both standard and crystal ligand and hence it can be further proceeded to drug discovery process.

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