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Updated: Jun 21, 2025

A Kinetic Fluorescence-based Ca2+ Mobilization Assay to Identify G Protein-coupled Receptor Agonists, Antagonists, and Allosteric Modulators
Published on: February 20, 2018
Discovery and characterization of small-molecule TGR5 ligands with agonistic activity
M Giovanna E Papadopoulos1, Alexander F Perhal2, Brian Medel-Lacruz3
1Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany.
Abstract:
The Takeda G protein-coupled receptor 5 (TGR5) is activated endogenously by primary and secondary bile acids. This receptor is considered a candidate target for addressing inflammatory and metabolic disorders. We have targeted TGR5 with structure-based methods for ligand finding using the recently solved experimental structures, as well as structures obtained from molecular dynamics simulations. Through addressing the orthosteric as well as a putative allosteric site, we identified agonists and positive allosteric modulators. While the predicted binding locations were not in line with their efficacy, our work contributes activating small-molecule ligands that we have thoroughly characterized in vitro.
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