Docking and Molecular Dynamics Calculations of Some Previously Studied and newly Designed Ligands to Catalytic Core Domain of HIV-1 Integrase and an Investigation to Effects of Conformational Changes of Protein on Docking Results

Nowadays, AIDS still remains as a worldwide pandemic and continues to cause many death which arise from HIV-1 virus. For nearly 35 years, drugs that target various steps of virus life cycle have been developed. HIV-1 integrase is the one of these steps which is essential for virus life cycle. Computer aided drug design is being used in many drug design studies as also used in development of the first HIV-1 integrase inhibitor Raltegravir. In this study 3 ligands which are used as HIV-1 integrase inhibitors and 4 newly designed ligands were docked to catalytic core domain of HIV-1 integrase. Each of ligands docked to three different conformations of protein. Prepared complexes (21 item) were carried out by 50 ns MD simulations and results were analyzed. Finally, the binding free energies of ligands were calculated. Hereunder, it was determined that designed ligands L01 and L03 gave favorable results. The questions about the ligands which have low docking scores in a conformation of protein could give better scores in another conformation of protein and if the MD simulations carry the different oriented and different localized ligands in same position at the end of simulation were answered.