Cited by 20Computational Drug Discovery MethodsProtein Structure and DynamicsHistone Deacetylase Inhibitors Research

Utilization of AlphaFold models for drug discovery: Feasibility and challenges. Histone deacetylase 11 as a case study

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Baselious, Fady, Robaa, Dina, Sippl, Wolfgang·2023·Computers in Biology and Medicine

Published version of a preprint

Abstract

Histone deacetylase 11 (HDAC11), an enzyme that cleaves acyl groups from acylated lysine residues, is the sole member of class IV of HDAC family with no reported crystal structure so far. The catalytic domain of HDAC11 shares low sequence identity with other HDAC isoforms which complicates the conventional template-based homology modeling. AlphaFold is a neural network machine learning approach for predicting the 3D structures of proteins with atomic accuracy even in absence of similar structures. However, the structures predicted by AlphaFold are missing small molecules as ligands and cofactors. In our study, we first optimized the HDAC11 AlphaFold model by adding the catalytic zinc ion followed by assessment of the usability of the model by docking of the selective inhibitor FT895. Minimization of the optimized model in presence of transplanted inhibitors, which have been described as HDAC11 inhibitors, was performed. Four complexes were generated and proved to be stable using three replicas of 50 ns MD simulations and were successfully utilized for docking of the selective inhibitors FT895, MIR002 and SIS17. For SIS17, The most reasonable pose was selected based on structural comparison between HDAC6, HDAC8 and the HDAC11 optimized AlphaFold model. The manually optimized HDAC11 model is thus able to explain the binding behavior of known HDAC11 inhibitors and can be used for further structure-based optimization.

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Authors
Baselious, F., Robaa, D., & Sippl, W.
Affiliations
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (DE)
Corresponding author
Sippl, Wolfgang
Venue
Computers in Biology and Medicine
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2023-12
Volume
167
Pages
107700
ISSN
0010-4825 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4388576120
Cited by
20
References
75
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 1
FWCI
2.86
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Computers in Biology and Medicine (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • ChemRxiv (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Digitalen Hochschulbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt (Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computational Theory and Mathematics › Computational Drug Discovery Methods
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Protein Structure and Dynamics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors Research
Keywords
HDAC11, AlphaFold, protein structure prediction, structure-based drug design, zinc binding, molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulation, structure-guided optimization
MeSH terms
Feasibility Studies, Histone Deacetylases, Drug Discovery, Molecular Dynamics Simulation, Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors

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