Comparative study of free energies of solvation of phenylimidazole inhibitors of cytochrome P450cam by free energy simulation, AMSOL, and Poisson Boltzmann methods

Abstract

Free energies of solvation of phenylimidazole inhibitors of cytochrome P450cam were determined using (1) free energy simulation, (2) AMSOL-SM2 semiempirical methods, and (3) Poisson-Boltzmann methods. The goals of this study were threefold: (1) to compare the results obtained from the three different methods, (2) to investigate the effect of inclusion of intraperturbed group interactions on free energy simulation estimates of solvation free energy differences, and (3) to investigate to what extent differences in free energies of solvation among three of these inhibitors could account for observed differences in their enzyme binding free energies. In general, relative solvation free energies obtained from the free energy simulations and AMSOL-SM2 methods give comparable results (i.e., the same rank ordering and similar quantitative results, differing significantly from results obtained using Poisson-Boltzmann methods). The free energy simulation studies suggest that the neglect of intraperturbed group interactions had little effect on rank order of free energies of solvation of the polar phenylimidazoles. The relative desolvation free energies of the three inhibitors of P450cam—1-phenylimidazole (1-PI), 2-phenylimidazole (2-PI), and 4-phenylimidazole (4-PI)—with known enzyme bound X-ray structures parallel that of their known binding affinities and could account for most of the differences in the free energies of binding of these three inhibitors to P450cam. The origin of the difference of the free energies of solution of these three inhibitors is primarily the additional interaction between solvent and N(SINGLE BOND)H group in the imidazole ring of 2- and 4-phenylimidazole that is absent in the 1-phenylimidazole isomer. This hypothesis is substantiated by a second comparison of the relative solvation free energies of 4-phenylimidazole with its methylated derivative, 3-methyl-4-phenylimidazole, also lacking an N(SINGLE BOND)H group. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.