Exploration of the conformational space of a polymeric material that inhibits human immunodeficiency virus

Baertschi et al. (Antiviral Chem. Chemother. 1997, 8, 353-362) clarified the nature of a polymeric degradation product formed from the cephalosporin ceftazidime. Interest in the polymeric material arises from its ability to inhibit the RNase H and polymerase activities of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT). To shed light on the structure of the polymeric material like that which forms from degradation of third-generation cephalosporins, we apply molecular modeling and other computational chemistry techniques. Aminothiazole methoxime (2-amino-4-thiazolyl-methoxyimino; ATMO) is the parent structure related to the isolated degradation product of ceftazidime. The MMFF94 force field and Monte Carlo multiple minimum method as implemented in MacroModel are used to generate low-energy conformers. We built up oligomeric models starting from the trimer to the 16-mer and performed distribution analyses on the dihedral angles from the Monte Carlo runs to analyze the three-dimensional shapes of the oligomers. Although the larger oligomers are too long for a complete search of conformational space, the low-energy conformers examined do not show secondary structure or repetitive conformations. Polymeric ATMO material may, therefore, exhibit only random coil conformations. Topological similarity of ATMO structures to other reported RT inhibitors is also examined.