Drug repurposing for Mpox: Discovery of small molecules as potential inhibitors against DNA‐dependent RNA polymerase using molecular modeling approach
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mpox (formerly Monkeypox), a zoonotic illness caused by the Mpox virus, belongs to the Orthopoxvirus genus in the family Poxviridae. To design and develop effective antiviral therapeutics against DNA viruses, the DNA-dependent RNA polymerase (DdRp) of poxviruses has emerged as a promising drug target. In the present study, we modeled the three-dimensional (3D) structure of DdRp using a template-based homology approach. After modeling, virtual screening was performed to probe the molecular interactions between 1755 Food and Drug Administration-approved small molecule drugs (≤500 molecular weight) and the DdRp of Mpox. Based on the binding affinity and molecular interaction patterns, five drugs, lumacaftor (-11.7 kcal/mol), conivaptan (-11.7 kcal/mol), betulinic acid (-11.6 kcal/mol), fluspirilene (-11.3 kcal/mol), and imatinib (-11.2 kcal/mol), have been ranked as the top drug compounds interacting with Mpox DdRp. Complexes of these shortlisted drugs with DdRp were further evaluated using state-of-the-art all-atoms molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on 200 nanoseconds followed by principal component analysis (PCA). MD simulations and PCA results revealed highly stable interactions of these small drugs with DdRp. After due validation in wet-lab using available in vitro and in vivo experiments, these repurposed drugs can be further utilized for the treatment of contagious Mpox virus. The outcome of this study may establish a solid foundation to screen repurposed and natural compounds as potential antiviral therapeutics against different highly pathogenic viruses.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it