Evaluation of potential inhibitors of squalene synthase based on virtual screening and in vitro studies

Squalene synthase (SQS) is a potential target for hyperlipidemia treatment. To identify novel chemical scaffolds of SQS inhibitors, we generated 3D-QSAR pharmacophore models using HypoGen. The best quantitative pharmacophore model, Hypo 1, was selected for virtual screening using two chemical databases, Specs and Traditional Chinese Medicine database (TCM). The best-mapped hit compounds were then subjected to filtering by Lipinski^'s rule of five and docking studies to refine the hits. Finally, five compounds were selected from the top-ranked hit compounds for SQS inhibitory assay in vitro. Three of these compounds could inhibit SQS in vitro, and should be further evaluated pre-clinically as a treatment for hyperlipidemia.