Since depression is a common
mental illness affecting an estimated 5% of people worldwide,
investigators are encouraged to develop effective antidepressants.
According to the monoamine-deficiency hypothesis, the underlying
pathophysiology of depression is a deficiency of some neurotransmitters
(serotonin, norepinephrine, or dopamine) in the central nervous system.
The neurotransmitter serotonin has drawn the most attention concerning
depression. As per research, 5-methoxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine
(5-MeO-DMT) elevates inter-synaptic serotonin levels when administered
as a single inhalation of vapor from dried toad secretion and leads to
higher life satisfaction, convergent thinking, higher ratings of
mindfulness, lower ratings of depression, and anxiety. Furthermore,
although 5-MeO-DMT lowers stress biomarkers such as cortisol, it is a
psychedelic with hallucinogenic effects. In the present study, analogues
of 5-MeO-DMT are designed with the hope that they might have better
therapeutic activity and lower psychedelic side effects. The current
study aimed to look at 5-MeO-DMT analogues as possible antidepressants.
We used 70,000 5-MeO-DMT analogues that were sketched using Marvin to
conduct a High Throughput Virtual Screening method in hopes of finding
potential 5-MeO-DMT analogues against the 5-Hydroxytryptamine 1A
receptor (5-HT1AR; 7E2Y.pdb) as an agonist. The prediction of the
analogue-protein interaction and the evaluation of the binding affinity
is accomplished by employing molecular docking. The Glide XP docking
data indicated that a total of 21 compounds had Glide gscores ranging
from -11.41 to -6.53 kcal/mol. When compared to the standard 5-MeO-DMT
with the binding affinity of -7.75 kcal/mol, 14 compounds showed better
binding affinity. Furthermore, Molecular Mechanics -Generalised Born and
Surface Area solvation (MM-GBSA) indicated a binding free energy range
of -63.55 to -35.37 kcal/mol, and 18 compounds showed better binding
free energy than standard 5-MeO-DMT (-41.42 kcal/mol). Through ligand
binding interactions with Asp116, Phe361, Phe362, Ser190, Ser199,
Val117, Trp358, Ala365, Pro369, Ile189, Tyr195, Ala203, Ile167, Tyr390,
Cys120, Trp358, Val364, Ala365, and Leu368, these complexes were
stabilized, according to the molecular dynamic simulation of 20453/7E2Y
in 100ns.