Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bharti, Hina
• Singal, Aakriti
• Saini, Manisha
• Cheema, Pradeep Singh
• Raza, Mohsin
• Kundu, Suman
• Nag, Alo

Titel

Repurposing the Pathogen Box compounds for identification of potent anti-malarials against blood stages of Plasmodium falciparum with PfUCHL3 inhibitory activity

Ist Teil von

• Scientific reports, 2022-01, Vol.12 (1), p.918-16, Article 918

Ort / Verlag

England: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Malaria has endured as a global epidemic since ages and its eradication poses an immense challenge due to the complex life cycle of the causative pathogen and its tolerance to a myriad of therapeutics. PfUCHL3, a member of the ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase (UCH) family of deubiquitinases (DUBs) is cardinal for parasite survival and emerges as a promising therapeutic target. In this quest, we employed a combination of computational and experimental approaches to identify PfUCHL3 inhibitors as novel anti-malarials. The Pathogen Box library was screened against the crystal structure of PfUCHL3 (PDB ID: 2WE6) and its human ortholog (PDB ID: 1XD3). Fifty molecules with better comparative score, bioavailability and druglikeliness were subjected to in-vitro enzyme inhibition assay and among them only two compounds effectively inhibited PfUCHL3 activity at micro molar concentrations. Both MMV676603 and MMV688704 exhibited anti-plasmodial activity by altering the parasite phenotype at late stages of the asexual life cycle and inducing the accumulation of polyubiquitinated substrates. In addition, both the compounds were non-toxic and portrayed high selectivity window for the parasite over mammalian cells. This is the first comprehensive study to demonstrate the anti-malarial efficacy of PfUCHL3 inhibitors and opens new avenues to exploit UCH family of DUBs as a promising target for the development of next generation anti-malaria therapy.