Protinhi Therapeutics is an early stage pharmaceutical company that performs research and development to fight flaviviral infections, and particularly dengue. Protinhi develops novel drugs based on inhibition of the viral protease, which is a critical enzyme for viral multiplication the human host. These protease inhibitors bind to the dengue protease and could be crucial to fight the dengue virus, similar to the role protease inhibitors play in the HIV and HCV diseases. A critical aspect of our research is to have detailed structural information on how protease inhibitors bind the protease enzyme.
Mind the Byte, a company based in Barcelona is specialized in in silico drug discovery and has applied its proprietary software to computationally understand the binding mode of several protease inhibitors developed by Protinhi Therapeutics. Also, Mind the Byte compared the binding mode of Protinhi’s proprietary compounds with that of several other published chemical structures. Finally, Mind the Byte used these results to search for commercially available compounds as potential new hits for the treatment of dengue. As an outcome of this Boost4Health collaboration, Protinhi Therapeutics is currently implementing the results provided by Mind the Byte in its lead optimization program for novel protease inhibitors.