Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry Commons^™

Dengue Virus Ns2b/Ns3 Protease Inhibitors Exploiting The Prime Side, Kuan-Hung Lin, Akbar Ali, Linah Rusere, Djade I. Soumana, Nese Kurt Yilmaz, Celia A. Schiffer

Celia A. Schiffer

The mosquito-transmitted dengue virus (DENV) infects millions of people in tropical and subtropical regions. Maturation of DENV particles requires proper cleavage of the viral polyprotein, including processing of 8 of the 13 substrate cleavage sites by dengue virus NS2B/NS3 protease. With no available direct-acting antiviral targeting DENV, NS2/NS3 protease is a promising target for inhibitor design. Current design efforts focus on the nonprime side of the DENV protease active site, resulting in highly hydrophilic and nonspecific scaffolds. However, the prime side also significantly modulates DENV protease binding affinity, as revealed by engineering the binding loop of aprotinin, a small protein …