Development of a pharmacophore for cruzain using oxadiazoles as virtual molecular probes: quantitative...

Chagas's is a neglected tropical disease caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. According to the World Health Organization, 7 million people are infected worldwide leading to 7000 deaths per year. Drugs available, nifurtimox and benzimidazole, are limited due to low efficacy and high toxicity. As a validated target, cruzain represents a major front in drug discovery attempts for Chagas disease. Herein, we describe the development of 2D QSAR ([Formula: see text] = 0.81) and a 3D-QSAR-based pharmacophore ([Formula: see text] = 0.82) from a series of non-covalent cruzain inhibitors represented mostly by oxadiazoles (lead compound, IC₅₀ = 200 nM). Both models allowed us to map key intermolecular interactions in S1', S2 and S3 cruzain sub-sites (including halogen bond and C‒H/π). To probe the predictive capacity of obtained models, inhibitors available in the literature from different classes displaying a range of scaffolds were evaluate achieving mean absolute deviation of 0.33 and 0.51 for 2D and 3D models, respectively. CoMFA revealed an unexplored region where addition of bulky substituents to produce new compounds in the series could be beneficial to improve biological activity.