Design of novel α7-subtype-preferring nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonists: application of docking and MM-PBSA computational approaches, synthetic and pharmacological studies

In the search for nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChRs) agonists with a selective affinity for the homomeric α7 channels, we carried out the virtual screening of a test set of potential nicotinic ligands, and adopted a simplified MM-PBSA approach to estimate their relative binding free energy values. By means of this procedure, previously validated by a training set of compounds, we reached a realistic compromise between computational accuracy and calculation rate, and singled out a small group of novel structurally related derivatives characterized by a promising theoretical affinity for the α7 subtype. Among them, five new compounds were synthesized and assayed in binding experiments at neuronal α7 as well as α4β2 nAChRs.