Human glucagon receptor antagonists with thiazole cores. A novel series with superior pharmacokinetic properties.

The aim of the work presented here was to design and synthesize potent human glucagon receptor antagonists with improved pharmacokinetic (PK) properties for development of pharmaceuticals for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. We describe the preparation of compounds with cyclic cores (5-aminothiazoles), their binding affinities for the human glucagon and GIP receptors, as well as affinities for rat, mouse, pig, dog, and monkey glucagon receptors. Generally, the compounds had slightly less glucagon receptor affinity compared to compounds of the previous series, but this was compensated for by much improved PK profiles in both rats and dogs with high oral bioavailabilities and sustained high plasma exposures.

Computational prediction of solubilizers' effect on partitioning.

A computational model for the prediction of solubilizers' effect on drug partitioning has been developed. Membrane/water partitioning was evaluated by means of immobilized artificial membrane (IAM) chromatography. Four solubilizers were used to alter the partitioning in the IAM column.

Homology building as a means to define antigenic epitopes on dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) from Plasmodium falciparum.

Background: The aim of this study was to develop site-specific antibodies as a tool to capture Plasmodium falciparum-dihydrofolate reductase (Pf-DHFR) from blood samples from P. falciparum infected individuals in order to detect, in a sandwich ELISA, structural alterations due to point mutations in the gene coding for Pf-DHFR. Furthermore, we wanted to study the potential use of homology models in general and of Pf-DHFR in particular in predicting antigenic malarial surface epitopes.

Efficient generation, storage, and manipulation of fully flexible pharmacophore multiplets and their use in 3-D similarity searching.

Pharmacophore triplets and quartets have been used by many groups in recent years, primarily as a tool for molecular diversity analysis. In most cases, slow processing speeds and the very large size of the bitsets generated have forced researchers to compromise in terms of how such multiplets were stored, manipulated, and compared, e.g.

Differential interactions of nateglinide and repaglinide on the human beta-cell sulphonylurea receptor 1.

Repaglinide and nateglinide represent a new class of insulin secretagogues, structurally unrelated to sulphonylureas, that were developed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. The inhibitory effect of these drugs was investigated on recombinant wild-type and mutant Kir6.2/SUR1 channels expressed in HEK293 cells.

Assessing the relative importance of the biophysical properties of amino acid substitutions associated with human genetic disease.

The inclusion of a mutation in a pathology-based database such as the Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD) is a two-stage process: first, the mutation must occur at the DNA level, then it must cause a clinically detectable disease state. The likelihood of the latter step, termed the relative clinical observation likelihood (RCOL), can be regarded as a function of the structural/functional consequences of a mutation at the protein level. Following this paradigm, we modeled in silico all amino acid replacements that could potentially have arisen from an inherited single base pair substitution in five human genes encoding arylsulphatase A (ARSA), antithrombin III (SERPINC1), protein C (PROC), phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH), and transthyretin (TTR).

Structural differences of matrix metalloproteinases with potential implications for inhibitor selectivity examined by the GRID/CPCA approach.

The matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are a family of proteolytic enzymes, which have been the focus of a lot of research in recent years because of their involvement in various disease conditions. In this study, structures of 10 enzymes (MMP1, MMP2, MMP3, MMP7, MMP8, MMP9, MMP12, MMP13, MMP14, and MMP20) were examined with the intention of highlighting regions that could be potential sites for obtaining selectivity. For this purpose, the GRID/CPCA approach as implemented in GOLPE was used.