Hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases (HSDs) play a key role in the regulation of the steroid hormone metabolism and belong to two protein superfamilies the short-chain dehydrogensases/reductses (SDR) and the aldo-keto reductases (AKR). Up-regulation of their enzymatic activity can be involved in pathogenesis of many serious disorders in humans like Alzheimer’s disease or hormone-dependent cancers. Thus, since many years HSDs constitute interesting targets for the development of specific inhibitors which could be applied as potent therapeutic drugs. Two of the 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases, the 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 3 belonging to the SDRs and 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 5 (belonging to the aldoketo reductases (AKRs), catalyze reactions of the testosterone biosynthesis and an enhanced activity of the enzymes is linked to several androgen-related illnesses such as for example prostate cancer.
Nowadays due to advances in bioinformatics as well computational methods of molecular modelling high throughput rational approaches for designing new enzyme-specific inhibitors are available. Co-operating researchers of the company BioNetWorks and the University Innsbruck developed two ligand-and structure-based pharmacophore models and applied those to identify potential inhibitors for 17betaHSD3 and 5. By this in silico screen, 35 chemically diverse compounds we found as potent candidate inhibitors. In this PhD work here the 35 candidate compounds were subjected to biological evaluation. This allowed to discover some promising compounds, which could be lead structures for further researching or pharmacological tools in future projects. One of the compounds against the reductive activity of 17betaHSD5 even displayed an inhibitory activity in the nanomolar range and therefore was characterized in more detail. For this compound a Ki of 180 nM and IC50 values ranging between 140nM and 290nM, were found, depending on the kind of enzymatic assay applied.
Moreover, not all recently identified SDRs have been analyzed in detail yet. Three barely annotated human SDR candidates, which reveal some similarities to known hydroxysteroid dehydrogneses, were chosen in this PhD work for further characterization: hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 8 HSD17B8, an orphan SDR (SDR-O) and hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase like 2 (HSDL2). In search for their potent functions in human results for e.g., subcellular localization, bioinformatics studies based on sequence analysis of primary amino acid structure as well enzymatic tests checking the activities towards steroid and retinoid substrates are here presented. Two of the enzyme could be assigned to cellular compartments, HSD17B8 to mitochondria, HSDL2 to peroxisomes or mitochondria, while the preferred location of SDR-O remains unclear. Of the three enzymes only HSD17B8 showed an enzymatic activity with a steroid substrate, in that case estradiol, and only SDR-O was able to metabolize a retinoid compound, i.e., weak activity towards retinaldehyde in the presence of NADH as cofactor was observed with the human SDR-O gene.
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Hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases (HSDs) play a key role in the regulation of the steroid hormone metabolism and belong to two protein superfamilies the short-chain dehydrogensases/reductses (SDR) and the aldo-keto reductases (AKR). Up-regulation of their enzymatic activity can be involved in pathogenesis of many serious disorders in humans like Alzheimer’s disease or hormone-dependent cancers. Thus, since many years HSDs constitute interesting targets for the development of specific inhibitors whic...
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