Analog based pharmacophore strategy to identify novel leukotriene a4 hydrolase (LTA4H) inhibitors

Leukotriene A4 hydrolase (LTA4H) is a hydrolase with a bifunctional zinc enzyme, which plays arole in inflammation. LTA4H may also play an important role in carcinogenesis, especially chronicinflammation-associated carcinogenesis. In this study, chemical feature based pharmacophore modelsbased on 22 currently available LTA4H inhibitors have been developed with the aid of HipHop andHypoRefine modules within Catalyst program package. 3D pharmacophore model developed was,characterized by distinct chemical features such as Hydrogen-bond acceptor (HA), Hydrogen-bond donor(HD), Hydrophobic aliphatic (HPAli), Hydrophobic aromatic (HPAr) that are found to be responsible for theactivity of the LTA4H inhibitors. The correlation coefficient, root mean square deviation and cost differencewere 0.92, 1.0867 and 53.62 respectively, suggesting that a highly predictive pharmacophore model wassuccessfully obtained. The results of our study provide a valuable tool in designing new leads with desiredbiological activity for virtual screening.