Targeted 8-hydroxyquinoline fragment based small molecule drug discovery against neglected botulinum neurotoxin type...

Botulinum neurotoxins are highly potent biological warfare agents. The unavailability of countermeasures against these neurotoxins has been a matter of extensive research. However, no clinical therapeutics has come to existence till date. The 8-hydroxyquinoline (8-HQ) scaffold is established privileged compound and its potential as drug candidate against BoNTs is recently being explored.

In present work, three course studies were performed involving in silico, in vitro and in vivo cascade to screen 8-HQ small molecule inhibitors against BoNT/F intoxication. ~800 molecules obtained from open repositories were screened in silico and commercially obtained twenty-four 8-HQ derived small molecule inhibitors were evaluated against rBoNT/F light chain through fluorescence thermal shift (FTS) assay. Selected compounds were further evaluated through endopeptidase assay. Further binding affinity analysis was done through surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based Proteon™ XPR 36 system. Finally, the in vivo efficacy of these compounds was evaluated in mice model.

Three compounds NSC1011, NSC1014 and NSC84094 were found to be highly inhibitory after screening of 8-HQ compounds through FTS assay and endopeptidase assay. SPR based protein-small molecule interaction studies showed highest affinity binding of NSC1014 (K_D: 5.58E-06) with BoNT/F-LC. NSC1011, NSC1014, and NSC84094 displayed IC₅₀ of 30.47 ± 6.24, 14.91 ± 2.49 and 17.39 ± 2.74 μM, respectively, in endopeptidase assay. NSC1011 and NSC1014 displayed marked extension of survival time in mice model.

NSC1011 and NSC1014 have emerged as promising drug candidate against BoNT/F intoxication displaying higher potential than previously reported compounds.