Molecular docking studies in factor XIa binding site

Factor XIa inhibitors have been identified to have potential as anticoagulants with robust efficacy and low bleeding risks. In light of their significance and the availability of their 3-D X-ray data in the PDB, we present molecular docking studies carried out with a view to obtain docking protocols that will successfully reproduce the experimentally observed protein-ligand interactions in the case of various X-ray ligands. In this context, we have specifically investigated the efficacy of various cross-docking protocols in reproducing experimental data. Our studies demonstrate that an ensemble of the three apo proteins is capable of accurately docking a majority of the X-ray ligands accurately without invoking any additional conformational flexibility than that present in their experimental structures. Further, we demonstrate that such an ensemble is successfully able to enrich a collection of known active factor XIa inhibitors embedded in a decoy database of drug-like molecules.

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