Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42912944›Full record

ArticleJournal of chemical information and modeling2026

Computer-Aided Drug Design for Type 2 Diabetes-Related Enzymes: SILCS-Based Fragment Mapping, Pharmacophore Modeling, and Virtual Screening.

Esmat Mohammadi, Justin A Lemkul

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of chemical information and modeling, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Esmat MohammadiDepartment of Chemical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia24061, United States.ORCID 0009-0006-2631-4990
Justin A LemkulDepartment of Biochemistry, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia24061, United States.ORCID 0000-0001-6661-8653

Funding

Exploring Electronic Polarization in Biomolecular Folding and InteractionsR35GM133754 · NIGMS · VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INST AND ST UNIV · PI Justin Alan Lemkul · 2019 to 2026
$2.2M
Division of Materials Research 1933525GlycoMIP NANational Institute of Food and Agriculture VA-160211NIGMS NIH HHS R35GM133754
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Highly charged enzyme active sites present a challenge for conventional Site Identification by Ligand Competitive Saturation (SILCS) because strongly interacting charged probes can suppress sampling of neutral fragments, while additive force fields do not explicitly account for electronic polarization. To address these limitations, we developed a comprehensive SILCS-based computational framework and applied it to the N-terminal and C-terminal domains of maltase-glucoamylase and to α-amylase. Both the conventional mixed-probe SILCS workflow and a modified neutral-charged protocol were evaluated using the CHARMM additive and Drude polarizable force fields. FragMap convergence analysis demonstrated reliable sampling across all systems, with the neutral-charged protocol alleviating competitive exclusion effects observed in conventional simulations. In highly charged catalytic pockets, the conventional workflow was dominated by cationic probe sampling, suppressing neutral and hydrogen-bonding features. Separation of charged and neutral probes restored chemically diverse interaction patterns, improving representation of hydrogen-bond donor, acceptor, and hydrophobic hotspots. Incorporation of the Drude polarizable force field further enhanced resolution of electrostatic and hydrogen-bonding interactions. Energy-based SILCS-Pharmacophore models were generated from the neutral-charged FragMaps and used for virtual screening of the Maybridge and ChemBridge libraries. Hits were refined using SILCS-MC, ranked by ligand grid free energy (LGFE) and ligand efficiency (LE), and analyzed through scaffold- and fingerprint-based clustering. Integration of energetic and structural analyses enabled identification of favorable scaffolds and functional group patterns associated with strong binding efficiency. Together, this study develops, evaluates, and applies an improved SILCS workflow to three enzymes associated with type 2 diabetes (T2D), demonstrating its utility for characterizing highly charged active sites and prioritizing candidate inhibitors.

Indexed as

alpha-Amylasesalpha-GlucosidasesComputer-Aided DesignDiabetes Mellitus, Type 2Drug DesignCatalytic DomainDrug Evaluation, PreclinicalHumansLigandsModels, MolecularPharmacophorealpha-Amylasesalpha-GlucosidasesLigands

Identifiers

PMID42912944
PMCPMC13663488

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.