Toward the discovery of inhibitors of babesipain-1, a Babesia bigemina cysteine protease: In vitro evaluation, homology modeling and molecular docking studies

• Authors: Antunes S, Domingos A, Gomes JRB, Gomes P, Gonçalves LM, Perez B, Teixeira C
• Journal: Journal of Computer-aided Molecular Design
• Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24129820

Babesia bigemina is a protozoan parasite that causes babesiosis, a disease with a world-wide distribution in mammals, principally affecting cattle and man. The unveiling of the genome of B. bigemina is a project in active progress that has already revealed a number of new targets with potential interest for the design of anti-babesiosis drugs. In this context, babesipain-1 has been identified as a proteolytically active enzyme whose three-dimensional structure has not been resolved yet, but which is known to be inhibited by cysteine proteases inhibitors such as E64, ALLN, leupeptin, and vinyl sulfones
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