title: Combating infectious diseases through multivalent design.
abstract: Many biological interactions are multivalent, linking two particles via many copies of the same ligand-receptor binding pair. Examples of multivalent binding range from cell-cell adhesion to the assembly of large protein complexes from constituent multimers to the binding of AB5 bacterial toxins at the cell surface. Multivalent interactions can be effectively mimicked, inhibited, or disrupted through the design of suitable multivalent ligands. We review here recent work on multivalent ligand design based on a number of different chemical scaffolds, with a specific emphasis on the use of structure-based ligand design to target multimeric bacterial toxins.
authors.affiliation: Biomolecular Structure Center, Departments of Biochemistry and Biological Structure, Box 357742, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. erkang@u.washington.edu
authors.forename: Erkang
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.forename: Ethan A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Merritt
mesh_terms: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D001419:Bacteria / Q000187:drug effects*; D001427:Bacterial Toxins / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors*; D015195:Drug Design; D008081:Liposomes
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D001427:Bacterial Toxins; D008081:Liposomes