Open AccessFollowing the Lead from Nature with Covalent Inhibitors
Author(s) -
Roman Lagoutte,
Nicolas Winssinger
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
chimia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.387
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 2673-2424
pISSN - 0009-4293
DOI - 10.2533/chimia.2017.703
Subject(s) - covalent bond , electrophile , chemistry , combinatorial chemistry , natural product , computational biology , identification (biology) , biochemistry , biology , organic chemistry , catalysis , botany
Covalent inhibitors are re-emerging as pharmacologically interesting entities with several candidates having received recent approval for therapeutic intervention. Nature has embraced this strategy and many natural products possess mildly electrophilic moieties able to covalently engage a target protein. This review surveys recent case studies for the identification of the target proteins of natural products. While sesquiterpene lactones represent a vast repertoire of covalent inhibitors, they can also be found in other classes of natural products, with sometimes unusual mechanisms to unmask the electrophilic moieties. These examples ought to be inspiring for the development of new biochemical probes and tomorrow's first-in-class drugs.