Covalent Inhibitors in Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Medicinal Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2023) | Viewed by 16005
Special Issue Editors
Interests: medicinal chemistry; design of enzyme inhibitors; activity-based protein profiling; infectious diseases; cancer
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In recent years, covalent inhibitors have reemerged not only as useful chemical tools to study biological processes but also as therapeutic tools with clinical and regulatory validation. The unique reactivity of cysteine towards electrophilic warheads has made this residue the nucleophile of choice for covalent engagement with a protein of interest. While targeting cysteine residues with covalent inhibitors has afforded numerous successful case studies, the paucity of cysteine in the proteome limits the number of proteins that can be targeted by this approach. This drawback has led to the development of novel methodologies that include targeted covalent inhibitors (TCIs) designed to bind poorly conserved amino acids for covalent modification. With this Special Issue, we will provide the scientific community with a survey on the current advances in novel strategies and warheads that covalently modify different nucleophilic amino acids in proteins, and how these findings have been translated into new therapeutic solutions for specific unmet medical needs. Issues of utmost importance in designing efficacious and safe covalent inhibitors, such as modulation of the duration of action and management of toxicity risks, will also be addressed. Finally, we will include recent breakthroughs in activity-based protein profiling (ABPP), which has greatly expanded the proteome coverage using probes that exploit specific reactivity and/or structural features of active sites to achieve the covalent labeling of proteins.
Prof. Dr. Rui F. A. Moreira
Dr. Ana Sofia M. Ressurreição
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- Targeted covalent inhibitors
- Mechanism-based drugs
- Warhead reactivity
- Activity-based protein profiling
- Drug design
- Protein modification
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