A study of the allosteric inhibition of HCV RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and implementing virtual screening for the selection of promising dual-site inhibitors with low resistance potential

AbstractStructure-based pharmacophores were generated and validated using the bioactive conformations of different co-crystallized enzyme-inhibitor complexes for allosteric palm-1 and thumb-2 inhibitors of NS5B. Two pharmacophore models were obtained, one for palm-1 inhibitors with sensitivity = 0.929 and specificity = 0.983, and the other for thumb-2 inhibitors with sensitivity = 1 and specificity = 0.979. In addition, a quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) models were developed based on using the values of different scoring functions as descriptors predicting the activity on both allosteric binding sites (palm-1 and thumb-2). QSAR studies revealed good predictive and statistically significant two descriptor models (r2 = .837, r2adjusted = .792 and r2prediction = .688 for palm-1 model and r2 = .927, r2adjusted = .908 and r2prediction = .779 for thumb-2 model). External validation for the QSAR models assured their prediction power with r2ext = .72 and .89 for palm-1 and thumb-2, respectivel...