Ligand-Based Virtual Screening as a Path to New Chemotypes for Candidate PET Radioligands for Imaging Tauopathies.

Ligand-based virtual screening (LBVS) has rarely been tested as a method for discovering new structural scaffolds for PET radioligand development. This study used LBVS to discover potential chemotype leads for developing radioligands for PET imaging of tauopathies. ZINC12, a free database of over 12 million commercially available compounds, was searched to discover novel scaffolds based on similarities to four query compounds.

Disrupting pathologic phase transitions in neurodegeneration.

Solid-like protein deposits found in aged and diseased human brains have revealed a relationship between insoluble protein accumulations and the resulting deficits in neurologic function. Clinically diverse neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, exhibit unique and disease-specific biochemical protein signatures and abnormal protein depositions that often correlate with disease pathogenesis. Recent evidence indicates that many pathologic proteins assemble into liquid-like protein phases through the highly coordinated process of liquid-liquid phase separation.

G protein-biased GPR3 signaling ameliorates amyloid pathology in a preclinical Alzheimer's disease mouse model.

Biased G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) ligands, which preferentially activate G protein or β-arrestin signaling pathways, are leading to the development of drugs with superior efficacy and reduced side effects in heart disease, pain management, and neuropsychiatric disorders. Although GPCRs are implicated in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD), biased GPCR signaling is a largely unexplored area of investigation in AD. Our previous work demonstrated that GPR3-mediated β-arrestin signaling modulates amyloid-β (Aβ) generation and that deficiency ameliorates Aβ pathology .

Candidate PET Radioligand Development for Neurofibrillary Tangles: Two Distinct Radioligand Binding Sites Identified in Postmortem Alzheimer's Disease Brain.

[(18)F]THK-523 and [(18)F]807 are promising radioligands for imaging neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) with positron emission tomography (PET) in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and traumatic brain injury. Although [(18)F]THK-523 and [(18)F]T807 are considered high-affinity selective radioligands for NFTs, uncertainty has existed as to whether PET radioligands for imaging NFTs bind to the same molecular site because in vitro assays for ligands binding to NFTs have been lacking. We labeled THK-523 and T807 with tritium to serve as reference radioligands for in vitro binding assays with AD brain homogenates for newly synthesized ligands.