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Publication Abstract from PubMed

Fatty-acid binding protein 4 (FABP4) is a promising therapeutic target for immunometabolic diseases, while its potential for systemic inflammatory response syndrome treatment has not been explored. Here, a series of 2-(phenylamino)benzoic acids as novel and potent FABP4 inhibitors are rationally designed based on an interesting fragment that adopts multiple binding poses within FABP4. A fusion of these binding poses leads to the design of compound 3 with an approximately 460-fold improvement in binding affinity compared to the initial fragment. A subsequent structure-aided optimization upon 3 results in a promising lead (17) with the highest binding affinity among all the inhibitors, exerting a significant anti-inflammatory effect in cells and effectively attenuating a systemic inflammatory damage in mice. Our work therefore presents a good example of lead compound discovery derived from the multiple binding poses of a fragment and provides a candidate for development of drugs against inflammation-related diseases.

Exploration of Fragment Binding Poses Leading to Efficient Discovery of Highly Potent and Orally Effective Inhibitors of FABP4 for Anti-inflammation.,Su H, Zou Y, Chen G, Dou H, Xie H, Yuan X, Zhang X, Zhang N, Li M, Xu Y J Med Chem. 2020 Apr 10. doi: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.9b02107. PMID:32202425^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.