Volume 35, Issue 8-9 pp. 309-325
Review

Use of Integrated Computational Approaches in the Search for New Therapeutic Agents

Marco Persico

Marco Persico

Department of Pharmacy, University of Naples “Federico II”, Via D. Montesano 49, 80131 Napoli, Italy

Italian Malaria Network – Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerche Sulla Malaria (CIRM), Department of Experimental Medicine and Biochemical Sciences, Via Del Giochetto, 06126 Perugia, Italy

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Antonio Di Dato

Antonio Di Dato

Department of Pharmacy, University of Naples “Federico II”, Via D. Montesano 49, 80131 Napoli, Italy

Italian Malaria Network – Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerche Sulla Malaria (CIRM), Department of Experimental Medicine and Biochemical Sciences, Via Del Giochetto, 06126 Perugia, Italy

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Nausicaa Orteca

Nausicaa Orteca

Department of Pharmacy, University of Naples “Federico II”, Via D. Montesano 49, 80131 Napoli, Italy

Italian Malaria Network – Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerche Sulla Malaria (CIRM), Department of Experimental Medicine and Biochemical Sciences, Via Del Giochetto, 06126 Perugia, Italy

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Paola Cimino

Paola Cimino

Department of Pharmacy, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II 132, 84084 Fisciano, Salerno, Italy

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Ettore Novellino

Ettore Novellino

Department of Pharmacy, University of Naples “Federico II”, Via D. Montesano 49, 80131 Napoli, Italy

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Caterina Fattorusso

Corresponding Author

Caterina Fattorusso

Department of Pharmacy, University of Naples “Federico II”, Via D. Montesano 49, 80131 Napoli, Italy

Italian Malaria Network – Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerche Sulla Malaria (CIRM), Department of Experimental Medicine and Biochemical Sciences, Via Del Giochetto, 06126 Perugia, Italy

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First published: 25 July 2016
Citations: 7

Graphical Abstract

Abstract

Computer-aided drug discovery plays a strategic role in the development of new potential therapeutic agents. Nevertheless, the modeling of biological systems still represents a challenge for computational chemists and at present a single computational method able to face such challenge is not available. This prompted us, as computational medicinal chemists, to develop in-house methodologies by mixing various bioinformatics and computational tools. Importantly, thanks to multi-disciplinary collaborations, our computational studies were integrated and validated by experimental data in an iterative process. In this review, we describe some recent applications of such integrated approaches and how they were successfully applied in i) the search of new allosteric inhibitors of protein-protein interactions and ii) the development of new redox-active antimalarials from natural leads.

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