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We report here two new small-size peptides acting as modulators of the β-site APP cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1) exosite. Ac-YPYFDPL-NH2 and Ac-YPYDIPL-NH2 displayed a moderate but significant inhibitory effect on BACE1. These peptides were obtained from a molecular modeling study. By combining MD simulations with ab initio and DFT calculations, a simple and generally applicable procedure to evaluate the binding energies of small-size peptides interacting with the exosite of the BACE1 is reported here. The structural aspects obtained for the different complexes were analyzed providing a clear picture about the binding interactions of these peptides. These interactions have been investigated within the framework of the density functional theory and the quantum theory of atoms in molecules using a reduced model. Although the approach used here was traditionally applied to the study of noncovalent interactions in small molecules complexes in gas phase, we show, through in this work, that this methodology is also a very powerful tool for the study of biomolecular complexes, providing a very detailed description of the binding event of peptides modulators at the exosite of BACE1.

The structure-based drug design has been an extremely useful technique used for searching and developing of new therapeutic agents in various biological systems. In the case of AD, this approach has been difficult to implement. Among other several causes, the main problem might be the lack of a specific stable and reliable molecular target. In this paper the results obtained using a pentameric amyloid beta (Aβ) model as a molecular target are discussed. Our MD simulations have shown that this system is relatively structured and stable, displaying a lightly conformational flexibility during 2.0 μs of simulation time. This study allowed us to distinguish characteristic structural features in specific regions of the pentamer which should be taken into account when choosing this model as a molecular target. This represents a clear advantage compared to the monomer or dimer models which are highly flexible structures with large numbers of possible conformers. Using this pentameric model we performed two types of studies usually carried out on a molecular target: a virtual screening and the design on structural basis of new mimetic peptides with antiaggregant properties. Our results indicate that this pentameric model might be a good molecular target for these particular studies of molecular modeling. Details about the predictive power of our virtual screening as well as about the molecular interactions that stabilize the mimetic peptide-pentamer Aβ complexes are discussed in this paper.