Catechin gallates are NADP+-competitive inhibitors of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase and other enzymes that employ NADP+ as a coenzyme.

Recent studies have shown that glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) is an effectual therapeutic target for metabolic disorders, including obesity and diabetes. In this study, we used in silico and conventional screening approaches to identify putative inhibitors of G6PD and found that gallated catechins (EGCG, GCG, ECG, CG), but not ungallated catechins (ECG, GC, EC, C), were NADP(+)-competitive inhibitors of G6PD and other enzymes that employ NADP(+) as a coenzyme, such as IDH and 6PGD.

PDB-Ligand: a ligand database based on PDB for the automated and customized classification of ligand-binding structures.

PDB-Ligand (http://www.idrtech.com/PDB-Ligand/) is a three-dimensional structure database of small molecular ligands that are bound to larger biomolecules deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). It is also a database tool that allows one to browse, classify, superimpose and visualize these structures. As of May 2004, there are about 4870 types of small molecular ligands, experimentally determined as a complex with protein or DNA in the PDB. The proteins that a given ligand binds are often homologous and present the same binding structure to the ligand. However, there are also many instances wherein a given ligand binds to two or more unrelated proteins, or to the same or homologous protein in different binding environments. PDB-Ligand serves as an interactive structural analysis and clustering tool for all the ligand-binding structures in the PDB. PDB-Ligand also provides an easier way to obtain a number of different structure alignments of many related ligand-binding structures based on a simple and flexible ligand clustering method. PDB-Ligand will be a good resource for both a better interpretation of ligand-binding structures and the development of better scoring functions to be used in many drug discovery applications.