Identification of novel serotonin transporter compounds by virtual Screening

Abstract

The serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) transporter (SERT) plays an essential role in the termination of serotonergic neurotransmission by removing 5-HT from the synaptic cleft into the presynaptic neuron. It is also of pharmacological importance being targeted by antidepressants and psychostimulant drugs. Here, five commercial databases containing approximately 3.24 million drug-like compounds have been screened using a combination of two-dimensional (2D) fingerprint-based and three-dimensional (3D) pharmacophore-based screening and flexible docking into multiple conformations of the binding pocket detected in an outward-open SERT homology model. Following virtual screening (VS), selected compounds were evaluated using in vitro screening and full binding assays and an in silico hit-to-lead (H2L) screening was performed to obtain analogues of the identified compounds. Using this multistep VS/H2L approach, 74 active compounds, 46 of which had Ki values of 1000 nM, belonging to 16 structural classes, have been identified, and multiple compounds share no structural resemblance with known SERT binders. © 2014 American Chemical Society.