Chemogenomics and bioinformatics approaches for prioritizing kinases as drug targets for neglected tropical diseases

Atlas of the Bacterial Serine-Threonine Kinases expands the functional diversity of the kinome

Bacterial serine-threonine protein kinases (STKs) regulate diverse cellular processes associated with cell growth, virulence, and pathogenicity. They are evolutionarily related to the druggable eukaryotic STKs. However, an incomplete knowledge of how bacterial STKs differ from their eukaryotic counterparts and how they have diverged to regulate diverse bacterial signaling functions presents a bottleneck in targeting them for drug discovery efforts. Here, we classified over 300,000 bacterial STK sequences from the NCBI RefSeq non-redundant and UniProt protein databases into 35 canonical and seven non-canonical (pseudokinase) families based on the patterns of evolutionary constraints in the conserved catalytic domain and flanking regulatory domains. Through statistical comparisons, we identified distinguishing features of bacterial STKs, including a distinctive arginine residue in a regulatory helix (C-Helix) that dynamically couples ATP and substrate binding lobes of the kinase domain. Biochemical and peptide-library screens demonstrated that constrained residues contribute to substrate specificity and kinase activation in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis kinase PknB. Collectively, these findings open new avenues for investigating bacterial STK functions in cellular signaling and for the development of selective bacterial STK inhibitors.

Multi-target Compounds against Trypanosomatid Parasites and Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Multi-target drug treatment has become popular as a substitute for traditional monotherapy. Monotherapy can lead to resistance and side effects. Multi-target drug discovery is gaining importance as data on bioactivity becomes more abundant. The design of multi-target drugs is expected to be an important development in the pharmaceutical industry in the near future. This review presents multi-target compounds against trypanosomatid parasites (Trypanosoma cruzi, T. brucei, and Leishmania sp.) and tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis), which mainly affect populations in socioeconomically unfavorable conditions. The article analyzes the studies, including their chemical structures, viral strains, and molecular docking studies, when available. The objective of this review is to establish a foundation for designing new multi-target inhibitors for these diseases.