title: Recent progress in protein drug design and discovery with a focus on novel approaches to the development of anti-cocaine medications.
abstract: Cocaine is highly addictive and no anti-cocaine medication is currently available. Accelerating cocaine metabolism, producing biologically inactive metabolites, is recognized as an ideal anti-cocaine medication strategy, especially for the treatment of acute cocaine toxicity. However, currently known wild-type enzymes have either too low a catalytic efficiency against the abused cocaine, in other words (-)-cocaine, or the in vivo half-life is too short. Novel computational strategies and design approaches have been developed recently to design and discover thermostable or high-activity mutants of enzymes based on detailed structures and catalytic/inactivation mechanisms. The structure- and mechanism-based computational design efforts have led to the discovery of high-activity mutants of butyrylcholinesterase and thermostable mutants of cocaine esterase as promising anti-cocaine therapeutics. The structure- and mechanism-based computational strategies and design approaches may be used to design high-activity and/or thermostable mutants of many other proteins that have clear therapeutic potentials and to design completely new therapeutic enzymes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Kentucky, 725 Rose Street, Lexington, KY 40536, USA.
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Chang-Guo
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Zhan
mesh_terms: D001665:Binding Sites; D002091:Butyrylcholinesterase / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D002265:Carboxylic Ester Hydrolases / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D003042:Cocaine / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D003198:Computer Simulation; D015195:Drug Design; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D002265:Carboxylic Ester Hydrolases; C019921:cocaine esterase; D002091:Butyrylcholinesterase; D003042:Cocaine