The transient specificity pocket of aldose reductase only opens in response to specific ligands. This pocket may offer an advantage for the development of novel, more selective ligands for proteins with similar topology that lack such an adaptive pocket. Our aim was to elucidate which properties allow an inhibitor to bind in the specificity pocket. A series of inhibitors that share the same parent scaffold but differ in their attached aromatic substituents were screened using ITC and X-ray crystallography for their ability to occupy the pocket. Additionally, we investigated the electrostatic potentials and charge distribution across the attached terminal aromatic groups with respect to their potential to bind to the transient pocket of the enzyme using ESP calculations. These methods allowed us to confirm the previously established hypothesis that an electron-deficient aromatic group is an important prerequisite for opening and occupying the specificity pocket. We also demonstrated from our crystal structures that a pH shift between 5 and 8 does not affect the binding position of the ligand in the specificity pocket. This allows for a comparison between thermodynamic and crystallographic data collected at different pH values.
Keywords: aldose reductase (ALR-2); binding mode; diabetes; electronic surface potential area (ESP); protein-ligand interaction; specificity pocket; structure-based drug design; transient binding pocket.