Herein we investigate whether QM/MM could prove useful as a tool to study the often subtle binding phenomena found within pharmaceutical drug discovery programs. The goal of this investigation is to determine whether it is possible to employ high level QM/MM calculations to answer specific questions around a binding event in a cycle time that is aligned with medicinal chemistry synthesis. To this end QM/MM calculations have been performed on four protein kinase-ligand complexes using five different levels of theory, using standard hardware, in an effort to assess their utility. We conclude that the accuracy and turnaround time of such calculations mean they could prove valuable to (1) probe the subtle nature of the interactions within protein active sites, (2) facilitate the interpretation of poorly resolved electron density, and (3) study the impact of substituent changes on the binding conformation or in the assessment of alternate scaffolds. In practice, the successful application of such methods will be limited by the size of the system under investigation, the level of theory used, and whether there is a need for conformational sampling.

The use of QM/MM based methods to optimize and rescore GOLD derived cross-docked protein-ligand poses has been investigated using a range of fragment-like kinase inhibitors where experimental data have been reported. Particular emphasis has been placed on rationalizing the potential benefits of the method in the increasingly popular fragment based drug discovery area. The results of this cross-docking, rescoring study on 9 protein ligand complexes suggest that the hybrid QM/MM calculations could prove useful in kinase fragment based drug discovery (FBDD). B3LYP/6-31G**//UFF derived enthalphies allow us to identify the correct X-ray pose from a range of plausible decoys 77% of the time, almost a doubling of the retrieval rate compared to GOLD (44%). In addition, this method provides us with a means to rapidly and accurately generate virtual protein-ligand complexes that will allow a program team to probe the existing interactions between the ligand and protein and search for additional interactions.

In this study the results from a series of calculations are reported that probe the influence of the QM cluster size and the extended framework treatment in ONIOM calculations. This is done by comparing the differences in the structures and energetics obtained during simulations of cis-trans isomerisation of butene in H-ZSM-5 at varying level of accuracy. Seven different models have been employed; 3T, 5T and 10T DFT cluster models, and to more effectively encode the extended framework of ZSM-5; 3T:46T, 5T:46T, 10T:46T DFT:MM ONIOM models, and a 46T DFT cluster model. The results show that irrespective of the exact QM cluster size, relatively small gasphase clusters show clear limitations due to the neglect of the extended framework. In particular, the structural and electronic implications of using the different zeolite models have been rigorously assessed using the multivariate statistical method principal components analysis (PCA).

In this study, the results from a systematic analysis of two different mechanisms for the skeletal isomerization of cis-butene to isobutene in ferrierite (FER) are presented. One involves a conventional mechanism that proceeds via stable alkoxide intermediates and the other is one which proceeds via carbenium ions only. A 27T QM cluster model has been used in this study, which is described using the M06-2X DFT functional. It is found that the alkoxide intermediates formed over the course of the conventional pathway are considerably lower in energy than the carbenium ion formed over the course of the alternate pathway. However, the rate determining step in the latter pathway is predicted to be almost 10 kcal/mol lower in energy. The higher barrier for the latter process is due to the inherent stability of the alkoxide intermediates formed within FER. These results appear to suggest that while these intermediates are formed over the course of the reaction, the skeletal isomerization of linear butenes to form isobutene in FER may occur via a carbenium based mechanism. This proposal is consistent with experimental results that show alkoxide intermediates are experimentally observed species.