Agaritine and Its Derivatives Are Potential Inhibitors against HIV Proteases

Wei-Na      Gao; Dong-Qing      Wei; Yun      Li; Hui      Gao; Wei-Ren      Xu; Ai-Xiu      Li; Kuo-Chen      Chou

doi:10.2174/157340607780620644

Abstract

Agaritine, or β-N-[γ-L(+)-glutamyl]-4-hydroxymethylphenylhydrazine, is a Chinese herbal medicine, known having the antiviral and anticancer function. However, so far no reports whatsoever have been made for its potential as an anti-HIV agent. It was observed by docking experiments for more than 9,000 compounds extracted from various Chinese medicines that the compound agaritine distinguished itself from all the others in binding to the HIV protease with the most favorable free energy. Based on this, a series of derivatives were generated by modifying agaritine. It has been observed thru an extensive docking study that some of agaritine derivatives had markedly stronger binding interaction with the HIV protease than agaritine, suggesting that these derivatives might be good candidates for developing drugs for AIDS therapy.

Keywords: HIV Protease, AIDS, agaritine, docking, binding interaction, derivative of chinese herbal medicine, structurebased drug design