Abstract
Interleukin-2 (IL-2), is a 15.5-kDa cytokine that is now emerging as a target in drug discovery for novel therapeutic approaches in several autoimmune disorders. In an attempt to identify new inhibitors for the IL-2/IL-2R interaction, virtual screening (VS) was performed. Four different docking programs (GOLD, FlexX, Glide, and LigandFit) in combination with several scoring functions were used to identify novel IL-2/IL-2R interaction inhibitors. VS of a database of 6,000 compounds resulted in the identification of three novel and moderately active hits with IC
values ranging from 6.6 to 44.3
M. Furthermore, the effect of these three compounds on the expression of IL-2R
was assessed. The three active hits showed dose-dependent inhibitory effects on the expression of IL-2R
with an IC
range of 5.8 to 140
M. The cytotoxicity of these active hits was assessed using three normal cell-lines: bovine kidney cell-line (MDBK), mouse fibroblast cell-line (3T3), and rat hepatocytes cell-line (CC-1). The compounds were found to have negligible cytotoxicity compared to their IC
as IL-2/IL-2R interaction inhibitors. These results demonstrate that our VS protocol can identify novel inhibitors for IL-2/IL-2R interaction that effectively suppress IL-2 production, as well as the expression of IL-2R
. Optimization of these molecules could lead to improved and effective anti-inflammatory therapeutics.