Combined Ligand- and Receptor-Based Virtual Screening Methodology to Identify Structurally Diverse Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase 1B Inhibitors

Abstract

Protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) is a potential drug target for diabetes and obesity. However, the design of PTP1B inhibitors that combine potency and bioavailability is a great challenge, and new leads are needed to circumvent this problem. Virtual screening (VS) workflows can be used to find new PTP1B inhibitors with little chemical similarity to existing inhibitors. Unfortunately, previous VS workflows for the identification of PTP1B inhibitors have several limitations, such as a small number of experimentally tested compounds and the low bioactivity of those compounds. We developed a VS workflow capable of identifying 15 structurally diverse PTP1B inhibitors from 20 compounds, the bioactivity of which was tested in vitro. Moreover, we identified two PTP1B inhibitors with the highest bioactivity reported by any VS campaign (i.e., IC₅₀ values of 1.4 and 2.1 μm), which could be used as new lead compounds.

Keywords: inhibitors; obesity; protein tyrosine phosphatase; type 2 diabetes mellitus; virtual screening.