The anti-fibrillogenic activity of tetracyclines on PrP 106-126: a 3D-QSAR study.

There is evidence that Tetracyclines are potentially useful drugs to treat prion disease, the fatal neurodegenerative disease in which cellular prion proteins change in conformation to become a disease-specific species (PrP(Sc)). Based on an in vitro anti-fibrillogenesis test, and using the peptide PrP106-126 in the presence of tetracycline and 14 derivatives, we carried out a three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationship (3D-QSAR) study to investigate the stereoelectronic features required for anti-fibrillogenic activity. A preliminary variable reduction technique was used to search for grid points where statistical indexes of interaction potential distributions present local maximum (or minimum) values.