Identification of novel agonists and antagonists of the ecdysone receptor by virtual screening

Abstract

Insect growth is regulated by the steroid hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E), which works via the ecdysone receptor (EcR). To identify biologically active and novel ecdysone agonists/antagonists, ligand/structure-based virtual screening combined with pharmacophore modeling and molecular docking was performed to identify novel nonsteroidal lead compounds. Nine molecules were screened and selected for an in vitro cell-based reporter bioassay. The results showed that VS-006 and VS-009 exhibited antagonistic activity in S2 cells, whereas only VS-006 exhibited antagonistic activity in Bm5 cells. Molecular dynamic simulation of VS-006 complexed with the ligand binding domain of EcR validated the binding stability of VS-006 and highlighted the key residues for further lead optimization.