Identification of Novel Mt-Guab2 Inhibitor Series Active against M. tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a leading cause of mortality worldwide. With the emergence of multidrug resistant TB, extensively drug resistant TB and HIV-associated TB it is imperative that new drug targets be identified. The potential of Mycobacterium tuberculosis inosine monophosphate dehydrogenase (IMPDH) as a novel drug target was explored in the present study. IMPDH exclusively catalyzes the conversion of inosine monophosphate (IMP) to xanthosine monophosphate (XMP) in the presence of the cofactor nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+). Although the enzyme is a dehydrogenase, the enzyme does not catalyze the reverse reaction i.e. the conversion of XMP to IMP. Unlike other bacteria, M. tuberculosis harbors three IMPDH-like genes, designated as Mt-guaB1, Mt-guaB2 and Mt-guaB3 respectively. Of the three putative IMPDH's, we previously confirmed that Mt-GuaB2 was the only functional ortholog by characterizing the enzyme kinetically. Using an in silico approach based on designed scaffolds, a series of novel classes of inhibitors was identified. The inhibitors possess good activity against M. tuberculosis with MIC values in the range of 0.4 to 11.4 µg mL−1. Among the identified ligands, two inhibitors have nanomolar Kis against the Mt-GuaB2 enzyme

Personalized therapy for mycophenolate:Consensus report by the international association of therapeutic drug monitoring and clinical toxicology

When mycophenolic acid (MPA) was originally marketed for immunosuppressive therapy, fixed doses were recommended by the manufacturer. Awareness of the potential for a more personalized dosing has led to development of methods to estimate MPA area under the curve based on the measurement of drug concentrations in only a few samples. This approach is feasible in the clinical routine and has proven successful in terms of correlation with outcome. However, the search for superior correlates has continued, and numerous studies in search of biomarkers that could better predict the perfect dosage for the individual patient have been published. As it was considered timely for an updated and comprehensive presentation of consensus on the status for personalized treatment with MPA, this report was prepared following an initiative from members of the International Association of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology (IATDMCT). Topics included are the criteria for analytics, methods to estimate exposure including pharmacometrics, the potential influence of pharmacogenetics, development of biomarkers, and the practical aspects of implementation of target concentration intervention. For selected topics with sufficient evidence, such as the application of limited sampling strategies for MPA area under the curve, graded recommendations on target ranges are presented. To provide a comprehensive review, this report also includes updates on the status of potential biomarkers including those which may be promising but with a low level of evidence. In view of the fact that there are very few new immunosuppressive drugs under development for the transplant field, it is likely that MPA will continue to be prescribed on a large scale in the upcoming years. Discontinuation of therapy due to adverse effects is relatively common, increasing the risk for late rejections, which may contribute to graft loss. Therefore, the continued search for innovative methods to better personalize MPA dosage is warranted.</p

Inferring motor programs from images of handwritten digits

We describe a generative model for handwritten digits that uses two pairs of opposing springs whose stiffnesses are controlled by a motor program. We show how neural networks can be trained to infer the motor programs required to accurately reconstruct the MNIST digits. The inferred motor programs can be used directly for digit classification, but they can also be used in other ways. By adding noise to the motor program inferred from an MNIST image we can generate a large set of very different images of the same class, thus enlarging the training set available to other methods. We can also use the motor programs as additional, highly informative outputs which reduce overfitting when training a feed-forward classifier. The idea that patterns can be recognized by figuring out how they were generated has been around for at least half a century [1, 2] and one of the first proposed applications was the recognition of handwriting using a generative model that involved pairs of opposing springs [3, 4]. The “analysis-by-synthesis ” approach is attractive because the true generative mode

Detection of the mycophenolate-inhibited form of IMP dehydrogenase in vivo

IMP dehydrogenase (IMPDH) is the rate-limiting enzyme for de novo GMP synthesis. Its activity is correlated with cell growth, and it is the target of a number of proven and experimental drug therapies including mycophenolic acid (MPA). MPA inhibits the enzyme by trapping a covalent nucleotide-enzyme intermediate. Saccharomyces cerevisiae has four IMPDH genes called IMD1—IMD4. IMD2 is transcriptionally regulated and is the only one that enables yeast to grow in the presence of MPA. We show here that de novo synthesis of the IMD2-encoded protein is strongly induced upon MPA treatment. We also monitor the in vivo formation of a covalent nucleotide-enzyme intermediate for Imd2, Imd3, and Imd4 that accumulates in the presence of MPA. Complete formation of the Imd2 intermediate requires drug concentrations manyfold higher than that required to quantitatively trap the Imd3- or Imd4-nucleotide adducts. Purification of the tagged IMD gene products reveals that the family of polypeptides coassemble to form heteromeric IMPDH complexes, suggesting that they form mixed tetramers. These data demonstrate that S. cerevisiae harbor multiple IMPDH enzymes with varying drug sensitivities and offer an assay to monitor the inhibition of IMPDH in living cells. They also suggest that mixed inhibition profiles may result from heteromeric complexes in cell types that contain multiple IMPDH gene products. The mobility shift assay could serve as a tool for the detection of drug-inactivated IMPDH in the cells of patients receiving MPA therapy