An evaluation of the cyclophilin inhibitor Debio 025 and its potential as a treatment for chronic hepatitis C.

Debio 025 is a cyclophilin (Cyp) inhibitor without calcineurin-binding properties. The drug inhibits viral replication of genotype 1b and 2a replicons in nanomolar concentrations and shows an additive to synergistic antiviral effect with interferon, ribavirin, and specifically targeted antiviral therapy for hepatitis C (STAT-C) drugs. There is no cross-resistance with protease and polymerase inhibitors. In humans, Debio 025 has shown activity against genotypes 1, 2, 3, and 4, and displays an additive antiviral effect with pegylated interferon (peg-IFN)alpha2a in genotype 1 and 4 patients. The most prominent side effect is reversible hyperbilirubinaemia caused by inhibition of biliary transporters. Debio 025 is a potent anti-HCV drug, with a novel mechanism of action and an efficacy profile that makes it an attractive candidate for combination with current and future HCV treatments.

Novel screening assay for antioxidant protection against peroxyl radical-induced loss of protein function.

Oxidative damage to proteins, implicated amongst other in the etiology and progression of Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), results in the loss of specific biological protein function. A simple, sensitive, and cost-effective fluorimetric test to assess the antioxidant capacity of new chemical entities to protect proteins from loss of activity caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS) was developed using alkaline phosphatase (ALP) as model protein. Protein oxidation was induced by 2,2'-azobis(2-methylpropionamidine) dihydrochloride (AAPH) and the decrease in catalytic activity of ALP to hydrolyze 4-methylumbelliferyl phosphate (4-MUP) to fluorescent 4-methylumbelliferone (4-MU) was monitored as a marker of protein degradation. According to their capacity to protect ALP from peroxyl radical-induced activity loss, ten reference antioxidants were divided into three classes, namely efficient (pIC(50) > 5 for quercetin, chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, mangiferin, and resveratrol), intermediate (4 < pIC(50) < or = 5 for melatonin, trolox, and ascorbic acid), and poor antioxidants (pIC(50) < 4 for glutathione and D-mannitol). Multifunctional drugs, having the ability to interact with several disease-related targets are of interest in PD. Therefore, the capacity of three catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) inhibitors, entacapone, nitecapone, and tolcapone to protect ALP from oxidative damage was also investigated and found to be very similar to the most potent reference antioxidants.

Impact of species-dependent differences on screening, design, and development of MAO B inhibitors.

The impact of species-dependent differences between human and rat MAO B on inhibitor screening was evidenced for two classes of compounds, coumarin and 5H-indeno[1,2-c]pyridazin-5-one derivatives. All examined compounds have shown a greater inhibitor potency toward human MAO B than toward rat MAO B. Moreover, no correlation was found between human and rat pIC(50) values. These divergences have important implications for the design and development of drugs involved in the MAO B metabolic pathway, suggesting that results obtained using rat enzyme cannot be extrapolated to human CNS, a priori. Indeed, the selection of a hit compound for lead generation could be different using human rather than rat enzyme. Moreover, the influence of substituents on the in vitro inhibition of human MAO B was markedly different between homogeneous series of coumarin and 5H-indeno[1,2-c]pyridazin-5-one derivatives, suggesting different binding modes, a hypothesis clearly supported by molecular docking simulations of inhibitors into the active site of human MAO B.

Human recombinant monoamine oxidase B as reliable and efficient enzyme source for inhibitor screening.

Interest in inhibitors of monoamine oxidase type B (MAO B) has grown in recent years, due to their therapeutic potential in aging-related neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. This study is devoted to the use of human recombinant MAO B obtained from a Baculovirus expression system (Supersomes MAO B, BD Gentest, MA, USA) as reliable and efficient enzyme source for MAO B inhibitor screening. Comparison of inhibition potencies (pIC50 values) determined with human cloned and human platelet MAO B for the two series of MAO B inhibitors, coumarin and 5H-indeno[1,2-c]pyridazin-5-one derivatives, showed that the difference between pIC50 values obtained with the two enzyme sources was not significant (P>0.05, Student's t-test). Hence, recombinant enzyme is validated as convenient enzyme source for MAO B inhibitor screening.

Ionization, lipophilicity, and molecular modeling to investigate permeability and other biological properties of amlodipine.

This paper uses a recent approach toward drug discovery, in which in silico tools and experimental data are combined together to study the structural features of amlodipine and their relevance in the peculiar pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic profiles of this long acting calcium antagonist. Results reveal for amlodipine two families of conformers (folded and extended) but also demonstrate that protonation is the predominant factor governing amlodipine intermolecular interactions among which ionic forces play a major role.