Small molecule inhibitors of PTP1B and TCPTP

Fragment based drug design is a new approach in identifying the initial chemical starting point for drug discovery programs. Fragment based drug design allows screening of substantially fewer compounds usually hundred - thousand compounds. It identifies fragments which bind specifically but with low affinity in the range of 0.1-10mM. The small sized fragments make the subsequent optimization relatively easier to build the molecule by exploring the chemical space in the binding pocket. The virtual screening study of small molecule compounds from a chemical library was carried out and few molecules were selected as inhibitors of PTP1B/TCPTP. These molecules were tested by in-vitro biochemical assay and were inhibiting both PTP1B and TCPTP. One of the compounds AU-008 was found selective to PTP1B over TCPTP by 3 fold.