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  • Perspective
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Metal–ligand interactions in drug design

Nature Reviews Chemistry volume 2, pages 100–112 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

The fast-growing body of experimental data on metalloenzymes and organometallic compounds is fostering the exploitation of metal–ligand interactions for the design of new drugs. Atomistic understanding of the metal–ligand interactions will help us identify potent metalloenzyme inhibitors and metallodrugs. Static docking calculations have proved effective in identifying hit compounds that target metalloproteins. However, the flexibility, dynamics and electronic structure of metal-centred complexes pose difficult challenges for shaping metal–ligand interactions in structure-based drug design. In this respect, once-prohibitive quantum mechanics-based strategies and extensive molecular simulations are rapidly becoming practical approaches for fast-paced drug discovery. These methods account for ligand exchange and structural flexibility at metal-centred complexes and provide good estimates of the thermodynamics and kinetics of metal-aided drug binding. This Perspective examines the successes, limitations and new avenues for modelling metalloenzyme inhibitors and metallodrugs to further explore and expand the unconventional chemical space of these distinctive drugs.

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Fig. 1: Metal–ligand interactions in metallodrugs and metalloenzyme inhibitors.
Fig. 2: Metal–ligand interactions in SBDD.
Fig. 3: Methods to model metal–ligand interactions in structure-based drug design.
Fig. 4: Structures of metalloenzyme inhibitors complexed to their target.
Fig. 5: Binding free energy profile of two sulfonamide inhibitors of the zinc CAII metalloenzyme.
Fig. 6: Structure of a nucleosome core particle bound to metallodrugs.

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Acknowledgements

M.D.V. thanks the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC) for financial support (IG 18883).

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  1. Laboratory of Molecular Modeling and Drug Discovery, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy

    Laura Riccardi, Vito Genna & Marco De Vivo

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All authors researched data and contributed equally to the discussion of the content of the article. L.R. and M.D.V. wrote the article.

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Riccardi, L., Genna, V. & De Vivo, M. Metal–ligand interactions in drug design. Nat Rev Chem 2, 100–112 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-018-0018-6

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