31st Annual Student Research Conference
Determining the Viability of Calpain Inhibitors as Drugs for Alzheimer’s Disease Using Computational Simulations
Ari Vera
Dr. Bill R. Miller, Faculty Mentor
As of 2017, 5.5 million Americans were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease; the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Researchers today look to either prevent or slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, and one potential treatment is with highly selective calpain inhibitors. Calpain, a protease enzyme, assists in the observed neurodegeneration associated with Alzheimer’s by regulating proteins essential for Alzheimer’s. These highly selective calpain inhibitors are necessary to prevent negative side effects which can include immunosuppression from cathepsin, another protease enzyme. A recent study looked at potential calpain inhibitors and used a variety of experiments to determine their inhibitory efficacy. This study will look at those inhibitors using molecular dynamics to assess their viability as an inhibitor by docking the inhibitors to the active sites of calpain and cathepsin using the PyRx program. This will hopefully aid in discovering more viable calpain inhibitors as treatments for Alzheimer’s patients.
Keywords: Chemistry, Alzheimer's Disease, Calpain , Inhibitors, Computational Chemistry
Topic(s):Chemistry
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 204-3
Location: MG 1098
Time: 10:00