Discovery of diverse human dihydroorotate dehydrogenase inhibitors as immunosuppressive agents by structure-based virtual screening

This study applied an efficient virtual screening strategy integrating molecular docking with MM-GBSA rescoring to identify diverse human Dihydroorotate Dehydrogenase (hDHODH) inhibitors. Eighteen compounds with IC(50) values ranging from 0.11 to 18.8 μM were identified as novel hDHODH inhibitors that exhibited overall species-selectivity over Plasmodium falciparum Dihydroorotate Dehydrogenase (pfDHODH). Compound 8, the most potent one, showed low micromolar inhibitory activity against hDHODH with an IC(50) value of 0.11 μM. Moreover, lipopolysaccharide-induced B-cell assay and mixed lymphocyte reaction assay revealed that most of the hits showed potent antiproliferative activity against B and T cells, which demonstrates their potential application as immunosuppressive agents. In particular, compound 18 exhibited potent B-cell inhibitory activity (IC(50) = 1.78 μM) and presents a B-cell-specific profile with 17- and 26-fold selectivities toward T and Jurkat cells, respectively.