7wmt

Publication Abstract from PubMed

Recent technological innovations have led to the development of methods for the rapid identification of high-affinity macrocyclic peptides for a wide range of targets; however, it is still challenging to achieve the desired activity and membrane permeability at the same time. Here, we propose a novel small molecule lead discovery strategy, Peptide-to-Small Molecule, which is a combination of rapid identification of high-affinity macrocyclic peptides via peptide display screening followed by pharmacophore-guided de novo design of small molecules, and demonstrate the applicability using nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT) as a target. Affinity selection by peptide display technology identified macrocyclic peptide 1 that exhibited good enzymatic inhibitory activity but no cell-based activity. Thereafter, a peptide pharmacophore-guided de novo design and further structure-based optimization resulted in highly potent and cell-active small molecule 14 (cell-free IC50 = 0.0011 muM, cell-based IC50 = 0.40 muM), indicating that this strategy could be a new option for drug discovery.

Peptide-to-Small Molecule: A Pharmacophore-Guided Small Molecule Lead Generation Strategy from High-Affinity Macrocyclic Peptides.,Yoshida S, Uehara S, Kondo N, Takahashi Y, Yamamoto S, Kameda A, Kawagoe S, Inoue N, Yamada M, Yoshimura N, Tachibana Y J Med Chem. 2022 Aug 11;65(15):10655-10673. doi: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.2c00919., Epub 2022 Jul 29. PMID:35904556^[1]

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