Discovery of new potential hits of Plasmodium falciparum enoyl-ACP reductase through ligand- and structure-based drug design approaches

We here report the discovery of novel Plasmodium falciparum enoyl-ACP reductase (PfENR) inhibitors as new antimalarial hits through ligand- and structure-based drug design approaches. We performed 2D and 3D QSAR studies on a set of rhodanine analogues using hologram QSAR (HQSAR), comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) and comparative molecular similarity indices analysis (CoMSIA) techniques. Statistical and satisfactory results were obtained for the best HQSAR (r2 of 0.968 and qLOO2 of 0.751), CoMFA (r2 of 0.955 and qLOO2 of 0.806) and CoMSIA (r2 of 0.965 and qLOO2 of 0.659) models. The information gathered from the QSAR models guided us to design new PfENR inhibitors. Three new hits were predicted with potency in the submicromolar range and presented drug-like properties.