Exploring Structure-based Drug Design for the Development of Multi-target Antihypertensives

This work reports the docking studies of compounds designed from the combination of substructures of three types of antihypertensives: angiotensin converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, calcium channel blockers and renin inhibitors. Consequently, multi-target compounds are expected to be obtained. Indeed, a few purposes showed both docking scores and intermolecular ligand-enzyme interaction towards all three targets higher than the reference compounds Captopril (ACE inhibitor), Amlodipine (calcium channel blocker) and Aliskiren (renin inhibitor). Particularly, the proposed compound 18 (containing a phenyl group, a substituted dihydropyridine and a piperazinyl-like group as substituents at the indoline scaffold) is a promising ligand for all three enzymatic targets. These results, which were discussed in terms of ligand-enzyme interactions (especially hydrogen bonding between amino acid residues and ligands), indicate promising perspectives for synthesis and biological tests.