Examining the stability of binding modes of the co-crystallized inhibitors of human HDAC8 by molecular dynamics simulation

Abstract

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) 8 has been implicated as a potential therapeutic target in a variety of cancers, neurodegenerative disorders, metabolic dysregulation and autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Several nonselective HDAC inhibitors have been co-crystallized with HDAC8. Molecular dynamics (MD) studies may yield valuable information on the structural stabilities of the complexes over time as determined by various pharmacophore features of the co-crystallized inhibitors. Here, using 11 unmodified X-ray crystal structures of human HDAC8 (complexes) structure-based pharmacophore models were built and clustered based on distance - a function of the number of common pharmacophore features and the root-mean-squared displacement between the matching features. Based on this information, a total of seven complexes (1T64, 1W22, 3RQD, 3SFF, 3F0R, 5VI6 and 5FCW) were submitted to unrestrained 50 ns-MD simulations using nanoscale MD (NAMD) software. 1T64 (HDAC8 in complex with TSA) was found to show the highest stability over time, presumably because of the TSA's ability to span HDAC8 catalytic channel and form a strong ionic interaction with zinc metal ion. Other stable complexes were 1W22, 3SFF, 3F0R and 5FCW. However, 3RQD and 5VI6 showed relative instability over 50 ns time period. This may be attributed to bulkiness of the capping groups of both largazole thiol and trapoxin A, making them unable to fit well into the active site of HDAC8. They rather formed steric clashes with residues on loop regions near the entrance to the channel. Thus, 1T64 and similar crystal structures may be good candidates for HDAC8 structural dynamics studies and inhibitor design.