Inhibition Mechanism of Indoleamine 2, 3-Dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) by Amidoxime Derivatives and Its Revelation in Drug Design: Comparative Molecular Dynamics Simulations

For cancer treatment, in addition to the three standard therapies of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, immunotherapy has become the fourth internationally-recognized alternative treatment. The immune checkpoint indoleamine 2, 3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) catalyzes the conversion of tryptophan to kynurenine causing lysine depletion, which is an important target in the research and development of anticancer drugs. Epacadostat (INCB024360) is currently one of the most potent IDO1 inhibitors, nevertheless its inhibition mechanism still remains elusive. In this work, comparative molecular dynamics simulations were performed to reveal that the high inhibitory activity of INCB024360 mainly comes from two aspects: disturbing the ligand delivery tunnel and then preventing small molecules such as oxygen molecules from accessing the active site, as well as hindering the shuttle of substrate tryptophan with product kynurenine through the heme binding pocket. The scanning of key residues showed that L234 and R231 residues both were crucial to the catalytic activity of IDO1. With the association with INCB024360, L234 forms a stable hydrogen bond with G262, which significantly affects the spatial position of G262-A264 loop and then greatly disturbs the orderliness of ligand delivery tunnel. In addition, the cleavage of hydrogen bond between G380 and R231 increases the mobility of the GTGG conserved region, leading to the closure of the substrate tryptophan channel. This work provides new ideas for understanding action mechanism of amidoxime derivatives, improving its inhibitor activity and developing novel inhibitors of IDO1.