Computational design of PD-L1 small molecule inhibitors for cancer therapy

Drug repurposing opens new avenues in cancer therapy. Drug repurposing, or finding new uses for existing drugs, can substantially reduce drug discovery time and costs. Cheminformatics, genetics, and systems biology advances enable repositioning drugs. Clinical usage of PD-1/PD-L1 blocking has been approved because of its efficacy in improving prognosis in select groups. The PD-1/PD-L1 axis was considered to represent a mechanism for tumour evasion of host tumour antigen-specific T-cell immunity in early preclinical research. The expression of PD-L1 in cancer cells causes T lymphocytes to become exhausted by transmitting a co-inhibitory signal. A better understanding of how PD-L1 is regulated in cancer cells could lead to new therapeutic options. In this view, the study was aimed to repurpose the existing FDA-approved drugs as a potential PD-L1 inhibitor through e-Pharmacophore modelling, molecular docking and dynamic simulation. e-Pharmacophore screening retrieved 324 FDA-approved medications with the fitness score ≥ 1. The top 10-docked FDA candidates were compared with IN-35 (Clinical trial candidate) for its interaction pattern with critical amino acid residues. Mirabegron and Indacaterol exhibited a greater affinity for PD-L1 with docking scores of - 9.213 kcal mol-1 and - 8.023 kcal mol-1, respectively. Mirabegron retain interactions at all three major hotspots in the PD-L1 dimer interface similar to IN-35. MM-GBSA analyses indicated that Mirabegron uses less energy to create a more stable complex and retains all of the inhibitor's positive interactions found in clinical trial ligand IN-35. Molecular dynamics simulation analysis of the Mirabegron complex showed a similar pattern of deviation in correlation with IN-35, and it retains the interaction with the active key amino acids throughout the simulation time. Our present study has shown Mirabegron as a powerful inhibitor of PD-L1 expression in cancer cells using a drug-repurposing screen.

Synthetic investigation of glycine catalyzed triarylimidazole based organophosphorous heterocyclic functionalized vinyl polymer - A green approach

In the present investigation, an efficient and environmentally adopted synthesis of triaryl substituted imidazole in one-pot was reported. The multicomponent reaction between various aldehydes, benzil, benzoin, ammonium acetate and glycine under solvent free condition has been explained. Instead of using toxic reagents for the synthesis of heterocyclic compounds, Glycine has been selected as a green catalyst due to simple work-up procedure, shorter reaction time and high yield. The synthesized imidazole derivatives on further treatment with phosphorous oxychloride resulted in an organophosphorous containing N-heterocyclic compound (N-P) thus by altering acidic hydrogen of imidazole. Further, N-P was reacted with polyvinyl alcohol resulted into organophosphorous N-heterocyclic vinyl polymers. The synthesized vinyl polymers were characterized using, FTIR, NMR and Mass spectral studies. Results of the spectral studies were well supported the formation of the compounds. Thermal stability have also been studied using TGA.

Studies on rhodamine B dye transport through a supported liquid membrane from basic aqueous solutions using phenol as a membrane phase

The aim of this work is to investigate the transport of rhodamine B across a supported liquid membrane under various experimental conditions.