Inhibition of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Pdr5p by a natural compound extracted from Brazilian Red Propolis
Multidrug resistance of cancer cells and pathogenic microorganisms leading to the treatment failure of some forms of cancer or life-threatening bacterial or fungal infections is often caused by the overexpression of multidrug efflux pumps belonging to the ATP-binding cassette transporters superfamily. The multidrug resistance of fungal cells often involves the overexpression of efflux pumps belonging to the pleiotropic drug resistance (PDR) family of ABC transporters. Possibly the best-studied fungal PDR transporter is the multidrug resistance transporter Pdr5p of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Some research groups have been searching for new inhibitors of these efflux pumps in order to alleviat…
Fragmentation Pathways of Polycyclic Polyisoprenylated Benzophenones and Degradation Profile of Nemorosone by Multiple-Stage Tandem Mass Spectrometry
Nemorosone is a polycyclic polyisoprenylated benzophenone (PPBs) with strong cytotoxic activity. It is the major constituent of Clusia rosea floral resin and brown Cuban propolis. Other PPBs found in Cuban propolis are oxidized and cyclized derivatives of nemorosone. The instability of PPBs carrying an enolizable 1,3-diketone system has been suggested, and the elucidation of this aspect is very fundamental for the evaluation of their biologic activity. Electrospray ionization multistage tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MSn) was employed to shed light on the origin of these derivatives of nemorosone and to define the stability of this natural product. For this purpose, we initially performed MS…
Screening of potent phytochemical inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 protease and its two Asian mutants
Abstract Background COVID-19, declared a pandemic in March 2020 by the World Health Organization is caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus has already killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide. Object The principal intent of this work was to investigate lead compounds by screening natural product library (NPASS) for possible treatment of COVID-19. Methods Pharmacophore features were used to screen a large database to get a small dataset for structure-based virtual screening of natural product compounds. In the structure-based screening, molecular docking was performed to find a potent inhibitor molecule against the main protease (Mpro) of SARS-…