Theoretical study of dengue virus protease NS3 and interaction with Bowman Birk-type inhibitors

Abstract

Currently, dengue is considered one of the viral infections that most affect tropical areas in the world and is transmitted to humans by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. The objective of this study was to evaluate the interactions between the dengue virus NS3 protease and compounds derived from flavonoids and Bowman-Birk-like inhibitors. Initially, the 3D structures of the NS3 and NS3/NS2B proteases were evaluated, and the compounds to be studied were optimized using the Sybyl 7.3 and Gaussian 03 programs, respectively. Molecular docking was carried out using the FlexX and EHits 2.0 packages. The studied compounds exhibited a linear relationship between the experimental and theoretical inhibition constants for the NS3 enzyme. However, this behavior did not occur for the NS3/NS2B enzyme. Therefore, it is expected that the mimetic peptides (Bowman-Birk type) have a greater preference for the initial stage of viral replication. Among the inhibitors with the highest potential were the peptide mol 18r (Bowman-Birk type) and the flavonoid derivative panduratin2. Therefore, this study contributes to the design and computational screening of new dengue virus inhibitors using the NS3 enzyme as a template."