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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

COMPUTATIONAL MODELING, DESIGN, AND CHARACTERIZATION OF COCAINE-METABOLIZING ENZYMES FOR ANTI-COCAINE MEDICATION

Fang, Lei 01 January 2013 (has links)
Cocaine is a widely abused and addictive drug, resulting in serious medical and social problems in modern society. Currently, there is no FDA-approved medication specific for cocaine abuse treatment. The disastrous medical and social consequences of cocaine abuse have made the development of an anti-cocaine medication a high priority. However, despite decades of efforts, traditional pharmacodynamic approach has failed to yield a truly useful small-molecule drug due to the difficulties inherent in blocking a blocker like cocaine without affecting the normal functions of the transporters or receptors. An alternative approach, i.e. pharmacokinetic approach, is to interfere with the delivery of cocaine to its receptors/transporters and/or accelerate its metabolism in the body. It would be an ideal anti-cocaine medication to accelerate cocaine metabolism producing biologically inactive metabolites. Two natural enzymes may catalyze hydrolysis of cocaine: human butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) and bacterial cocaine esterase (CocE). However, the wild-type enzymes are not suitable as anti-cocaine therapeutics, due to the low catalytic activity, thermoinstability, or short biological half-life. In this investigation, we performed integrated computational-experimental studies to rationally design and discover mutants of these enzymes in order to improve the catalytic activity, thermostability, and/or biological half-life. To rationally design desirable mutants of the enzymes, we have successfully developed computational models, including those for BChE gating, glycosylated BChE structure, BChE-substrate complex structures, BChE dimer/tetramer structures, CocE monomer/dimer structures, and CocE-substrate complex structures. Development of the computational models enabled us to rationally design new amino-acid mutations that may improve the catalytic activity, thermostability, and/or prolonged biological half-life. The computational design was followed by wet experimental tests, including both in vitro and in vivo experiments, leading to discovery of new enzyme forms with not only a high catalytic efficiency against cocaine, but also an improved thermostability and/or prolonged biological half-life. The identified new mutants of BChE and CocE are expected to be valuable candidates for development of a more efficient enzyme therapy for cocaine abuse. The encouraging outcomes of the present study also suggest that the structure-and-mechanism-based design and integrated computational-experimental approach is promising for rational drug design and discovery.

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