Discovery of CNS-Like D3R- Selective Antagonists Using 3D Pharmacophore Guided Virtual Screening

Abstract

The dopamine D3 receptor is an important CNS target for the treatment of a variety of neurological diseases. Selective dopamine D3 receptor antagonists modulate the improvement of psychostimulant addiction and relapse. In this study, five and six featured pharmacophore models of D3R antagonists were generated and evaluated with the post-hoc score combining two survival scores of active and inactive. Among Top 10 models, APRRR215 and AHPRRR104 were chosen based on the coefficient of determination (APRRR215: R 2 training = 0.80; AHPRRR104: R 2 training = 0.82) and predictability (APRRR215: Q 2 test = 0.73, R 2 predictive = 0.82; AHPRRR104: Q 2 test = 0.86, R 2 predictive = 0.74) of their 3D-quantitative structure-activity relationship models. Pharmacophore-based virtual screening of a large compound library from eMolecules (> 3 million compounds) using two optimal models expedited the search process 100-fold speed increase compared to the docking-based screening (HTVS scoring function in Glide) and identified a series of hit compounds having promising novel scaffolds. After the screening, docking scores, as an adjuvant predictor, were added to two fitness scores (from the pharmacophore models) and predicted Ki (from PLSs of the QSAR models) to improve accuracy. Final selection of the most promising hit compounds were also evaluated for CNSlike properties as well as expected D3R antagonism.

In Silico Repositioning of Dopamine Modulators with Possible Application to Schizophrenia: Pharmacophore Mapping, Molecular Docking and Molecular Dynamics Analysis

“…To tackle these issues, virtual screenings based on the best pharmacophore matching and molecular dynamics simulation were the leading centers of the present study. 16 − 19 A set of crystallographic ligands already bonded to DRs were inspected, and those certain frequent 3D shared pharmacophore features were grouped and then tested on the molecules identified as repurposing dopamine modulators. 20 …”