Orthosteric-allosteric dual inhibitors of PfHT1 as selective antimalarial agents. Author Jian Huang, Yafei Yuan, Na Zhao, Debing Pu, Qingxuan Tang, Shuo Zhang, Shuchen Luo, Xikang Yang, Nan Wang, Yu Xiao, Tuan Zhang, Zhuoyi Liu, Tomoyo Sakata-Kato, Xin Jiang, Nobutaka Kato, Nieng Yan, Hang Yin Publication Year 2021 Type Journal Article Abstract Artemisinin-resistant malaria parasites have emerged and have been spreading, posing a significant public health challenge. Antimalarial drugs with novel mechanisms of action are therefore urgently needed. In this report, we exploit a "selective starvation" strategy by inhibiting hexose transporter 1 (PfHT1), the sole hexose transporter in , over human glucose transporter 1 (hGLUT1), providing an alternative approach to fight against multidrug-resistant malaria parasites. The crystal structure of hGLUT3, which shares 80% sequence similarity with hGLUT1, was resolved in complex with C3361, a moderate PfHT1-specific inhibitor, at 2.3-Å resolution. Structural comparison between the present hGLUT3-C3361 and our previously reported PfHT1-C3361 confirmed the unique inhibitor binding-induced pocket in PfHT1. We then designed small molecules to simultaneously block the orthosteric and allosteric pockets of PfHT1. Through extensive structure-activity relationship studies, the TH-PF series was identified to selectively inhibit PfHT1 over hGLUT1 and potent against multiple strains of the blood-stage Our findings shed light on the next-generation chemotherapeutics with a paradigm-shifting structure-based design strategy to simultaneously target the orthosteric and allosteric sites of a transporter. Keywords Animals, Structure-Activity Relationship, Crystallography, X-Ray, Protein Conformation, Amino Acid Sequence, Glucose, Allosteric Site, Malaria, Falciparum, Plasmodium falciparum, Glucose Transporter Type 1, Glucose Transporter Type 3, Monosaccharide Transport Proteins, Protozoan Proteins, Antimalarials Journal Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Volume 118 Issue 3 Date Published 2021 Jan 19 ISSN Number 1091-6490 DOI 10.1073/pnas.2017749118 Alternate Journal Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A PMCID PMC7826358 PMID 33402433 PubMedPubMed CentralGoogle ScholarBibTeXEndNote X3 XML