Development of new covalent inhibitors: A challenging solution to medicinal chemistry

Abstract

Enzymes are biocatalysts which accelerate the various metabolic processes occurring in thebody. Sometimes these enzymes form a very backbone for growth and development of bacteria, viruses and parasites leading to a disease. Here comes the requirement of novel drug moleculesin the form of covalent inhibitors which act on active site of enzymes blocking it partially or completely thereby preventing the combination of substrate with enzyme. Designing a new covalent inhibitor requires complete mechanistic details of substrate enzyme facet, and the chemical constitution of activesite of enzyme. Broadly speaking the active siteof enzymes more generally involve presence of residues such as serine, threonine and cysteine. In this study we will develop covalent inhibitors for the cysteine proteases as enzymes.