Enzyme Inhibitors

Enzymes are biological catalysts that drive various reactions within a cell. They are required for nearly every function of a living cell/organism from digestion of food to the synthesis of DNA. Enzymes are usually very specific as to which reactions they catalyze and the substrates that are involved. Enzyme activity can be modulated by different classes of molecules. Enzyme Inhibitors are molecules that bind to the enzyme and decrease or completely stop their function. Since blocking the activity of an enzyme can have profound effects on the downstream cellular events sometimes with pathological or disease consequences, enzyme inhibition is a crucial component of new drug design. The discovery of new and potent enzyme inhibitors and developing better classes of inhibitors constitutes a dynamic branch of biochemical and pharmacological research.

An enzyme inhibitor can work in many different ways. The binding of an inhibitor can stop a substrate from entering the active site of the enzyme and/or prevent the enzyme from catalyzing its reaction. Inhibitor binding can be either reversible or irreversible. Reversible inhibitors bind non-covalently and different types of inhibition are produced depending on whether these inhibitors bind to the enzyme (competitive inhibition), the enzyme-substrate complex (uncompetitive inhibition), or both (non-competitive inhibition and mixed inhibition). Irreversible inhibitors, on the other hand, usually react with the enzyme via covalent bond formation and change the enzyme structure permanently. Small molecule inhibitors functioning in regulating and reprogramming the pathways governing the fate of a cell has revolutionized stem-cell research in the last few years.

In a nutshell, different types of inhibitors are being used to answer an increasing array of questions in biological and pharmaceutical research leading to discovery of new drugs or improvement of existing drugs eventually enhancing treatment options for human diseases like HIV, cancer, Diabetes, Alzheimer's the list being ever-increasing. BioVision offers a comprehensive collection of more than 1800 enzyme inhibitors covering all the core biological/pharmacological research areas. These inhibitors are listed based on the enzyme/pathway they work on.