Molecular Dynamics-Assisted Interaction of Vanadium Complex-AMPK: from the force field development to biological application for Alzheimer's treatment

Large part of the world population is affected by Alzheimer's disease (AD) and diabetes mellitus type 2, which causes both social and economic impacts. These two conditions are associated to one protein, AMPK. Studies have shown that vanadium complexes, such as bis(N',N'-dimethylbiguanidato)-oxovanadium (IV), VO(metf)2·H2O, are potential agents against AD. A crucial step on drug design studies is obtaining information about the structure and interaction of these complexes with the biological targets involved in the process through Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. However, MDs depend on the choice of a good force field that could present reliable results. Moreover, general force fields are not efficient for describing the properties of metal complexes, and a VO(metf)2·H2O-specific force field does not yet exist, thus the proper development of a parameter set is necessary. Furthermore, this investigation is essential and relevant given the importance for both the scientific community and the population that is affected by this neurodegenerative disease. Therefore, the present work aims to develop and validate the AMBER force field parameters for VO(metf)2·H2O, since the literature lacks such information on metal complexes, and investigate through classical molecular dynamics the interactions made by the complex with the protein. The proposed force field proved to be effective for describing the vanadium complex (VC), supported by different analysis and validation. Moreover, it had a great performance when compared to general AMBER force field. Beyond that, MD findings provided an in-depth perspective about vanadium complex-protein interactions that should be taken into consideration in future studies.