2 research outputs found
Active State-like Conformational Elements in the β<sub>2</sub>-AR and a Photoactivated Intermediate of Rhodopsin Identified by Dynamic Properties of GPCRs
G-Protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) adopt various functionally relevant conformational states in cell signaling processes. Recently determined crystal structures of rhodopsin and the β<sub>2</sub>-adrenergic receptor (β<sub>2</sub>-AR) offer insight into previously uncharacterized active conformations, but the molecular states of these GPCRs are likely to contain both inactive and active-like conformational elements. We have identified conformational rearrangements in the dynamics of the TM7âHX8 segment that relate to the properties of the conserved NPxxY(x)5,6F motif and show that they can be used to identify active state-like conformational elements in the corresponding regions of the new structures of rhodopsin and the β<sub>2</sub>-AR
Life Beyond Kinases: Structure-Based Discovery of Sorafenib as Nanomolar Antagonist of 5-HT Receptors
Of great interest in recent years has been computationally
predicting
the novel polypharmacology of drug molecules. Here, we applied an
âinduced-fitâ protocol to improve the homology models
of 5-HT<sub>2A</sub> receptor, and we assessed the quality of these
models in retrospective virtual screening. Subsequently, we computationally
screened the FDA approved drug molecules against the best induced-fit
5-HT<sub>2A</sub> models and chose six top scoring hits for experimental
assays. Surprisingly, one well-known kinase inhibitor, sorafenib,
has shown unexpected promiscuous 5-HTRs binding affinities, <i>K</i><sub>i</sub> = 1959, 56, and 417 nM against 5-HT<sub>2A</sub>, 5-HT<sub>2B</sub>, and 5-HT<sub>2C</sub>, respectively. Our preliminary
SAR exploration supports the predicted binding mode and further suggests
sorafenib to be a novel lead compound for 5HTR ligand discovery. Although
it has been well-known that sorafenib produces anticancer effects
through targeting multiple kinases, carefully designed experimental
studies are desirable to fully understand whether its âoff-targetâ
5-HTR binding activities contribute to its therapeutic efficacy or
otherwise undesirable side effects