Novel GSK-3β inhibitors from sequential virtual screening

Glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3β) has been emerging as a key therapeutic target for type-2 diabetics, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and chronic inflammation. For the purpose of finding biologically active and novel compounds and providing new idea for drug-design, we performed virtual screening using commercially available database. Three-dimensional common feature pharmacophore model was developed by using HipHop program provided in Catalyst software and it was used as a query for screening database. Recursive partitioning (RP) model was developed as a filtering system, which was able to classify active and inactive compounds. Eventually, a sequential virtual screening procedure (SQSP) was conducted by applying the common feature pharmacophore and RP model in succession to discover novel potent GSK-3β inhibitors. The final 56 hit compounds were carefully selected considering predicted docking mode in crystal structures. Subsequent enzyme assay for human GSK-3β protein confirmed that three compounds of these hit compounds exhibit micromolar inhibitory activity. Here, we report novel hit compounds and their binding mode in the active site of GSK-3β crystal structure.