The aim of this work is to present a simple, practical and efficient protocol for drug design, in particular Diabetes, which includes selection of the illness, good choice of a target as well as a bioactive ligand and then usage of various computer aided drug design and medicinal chemistry tools to design novel potential drug candidates in different diseases. We have selected the validated target dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-IV), whose inhibition contributes to reduce glucose levels in type 2 diabetes patients. The most active inhibitor with complex X-ray structure reported was initially extracted from the BindingDB database. By using molecular modification strategies widely used in medicinal chemistry, besides current state-of-the-art tools in drug design (including flexible docking, virtual screening, molecular interaction fields, molecular dynamics, ADME and toxicity predictions), we have proposed 4 novel potential DPP-IV inhibitors with drug properties for Diabetes control, which have been supported and validated by all the computational tools used herewith.

Key words: Diabetes; Drug design; DPP-IV inhibitors.

This article can be cited as:
E. P. Semighini, J. A. Resende, P. de Andrade, P. A. B. Morais, I. Carvalho, C. A. Taft, C. H. T. P. Silva. Using Computer-aided Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry Strategies in the Fight Against Diabetes, J. Biomol Struct Dyn 28(5) 787-796 (2011).