Repurposing of investigational cancer drugs: Early phase discovery of dengue virus NS2B/NS3 protease inhibitors

Dengue fever is a neglected vector-borne disease and is more prevalent in Asia. Currently, no specific treatment is available. Given the time and cost of de novo drug discovery and development, an alternative option of drug repurposing is becoming an effective tool. We screened a library of 1127 pharmacologically active, metabolically stable, and structurally diverse small anticancer molecules to identify inhibitors of the dengue virus (DENV) NS2B/NS3 protease. Enzyme kinetics and inhibition data revealed four B-cell lymphoma 2 inhibitors, that is, ABT263, ABT737, AT101, and TW37, as potent inhibitors of DENV NS2B/NS3 protease, with IC₅₀ values of 0.86, 1.15, 0.81, and 0.89 µM, respectively. Mode of inhibition experiments and computational docking analyses indicated that ABT263 and ABT737 are competitive inhibitors, whereas AT101 and TW37 are noncompetitive inhibitors of the protease. With further evaluation, the identified inhibitors of the DENV NS2B/NS3 protease have the potential to be developed into specific anti-dengue therapeutics.