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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1428925
This article is part of the Research Topic Old Drugs: Confronting Recent Advancements and Challenges View all 9 articles

Drug Repurposing to Tackle Parainfluenza 3 Based on Multi-similarities and Network Proximity Analysis

Provisionally accepted
Xinyue Chen Xinyue Chen 1Bo Zhou Bo Zhou 1,2Xinyi Jiang Xinyi Jiang 1Huayu Zhong Huayu Zhong 1Aijing You Aijing You 3Taiyan Zou Taiyan Zou 1Chengcheng Zhou Chengcheng Zhou 1Xiaoxiao Liu Xiaoxiao Liu 1Yonghong Zhang Yonghong Zhang 1,4*
  • 1 College of Pharmacy, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
  • 2 Department of Pharmacy, Children’s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, Chongqing Municipality, China
  • 3 Second Affiliated Hospital, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
  • 4 Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Given that there is currently no clinically approved drug and no vaccine for parainfluenza 3(PIV3), we applied a drug repurposing method based on disease similarity and chemical similarity to screen 2585 clinically approved chemical drugs using PIV3 potential drugs BCX-2798 and zanamivir as our controls. Twelve candidate drugs were obtained after screened with good disease similarity and chemical similarity (S>0.50, T>0.56). When docking them with the PIV3 target protein, hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN), only oseltamivir was docked with a better score than BCX-2798, which indicates that oseltamivir has indeed an inhibitory effect on PIV3. After the distance (𝑍𝑍 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 ) between the drug target of 14 drugs and the PIV3 disease target were measured by the network proximity method based on the PIV3 disease module, it was found that the 𝑍𝑍 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 values of amikacin, oseltamivir, ribavirin and streptomycin were less than those of the control. Then, oseltamivir is the best potential drug because only it met all above screening requirements. Additionally, to explore whether oseltamivir bind to HN stably, molecular dynamics simulation of oseltamivir binding to HN was proceed and the results showed that the RMSD value of the complex tended to be stable within 100ns, and the binding free energy of the complex was low (-10.60 kcal/mol). It was proved that oseltamivir screened by our drug repurposing method had the potential feasibility of treating PIV3.

    Keywords: Parainfluenza 3, drug repurposing, chemical similarity, Disease similarity, Network proximity

    Received: 07 May 2024; Accepted: 13 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Chen, Zhou, Jiang, Zhong, You, Zou, Zhou, Liu and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Yonghong Zhang, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.