Drug‐binding energetics of human α‐1‐acid glycoprotein assessed by isothermal titration calorimetry and molecular docking simulations

Johnny X. Huang, Matthew A. Cooper, Mark A. Baker, Mohammad A. K. Azad, Roger L. Nation, Jian Li, Tony Velkov

This study utilizes sensitive, modern isothermal titration calorimetric methods to characterize the microscopic thermodynamic parameters that drive the binding of basic drugs to α-1-acid glycoprotein (AGP) and thereby rationalize the thermodynamic data in relation to docking models and crystallographic structures of the drug-AGP complexes. The binding of basic compounds from the tricyclic antidepressant series, together with miaserine, chlorpromazine, disopyramide and cimetidine, all displayed an exothermically driven binding interaction with AGP. The impact of protonation/deprotonation events, ionic strength, temperature and the individual selectivity of the A and F1*S AGP variants on drug-binding thermodynamics was characterized. A correlation plot of the thermodynamic parameters for all of the test compounds revealed that an enthalpy-entropy compensation is in effect. The exothermic binding energetics of the test compounds were driven by a combination of favorable (negative) enthalpic (∆Hº) and favorable (positive) entropic (∆Sº) contributions to the Gibbs free energy (∆Gº). Collectively, the data imply that the free energies that drive drug binding to AGP and its relationship to drug serum residency evolve from the complex interplay of enthalpic and entropic forces from interactions with explicit combinations of hydrophobic and polar side-chain sub-domains within the multi-lobed AGP ligand binding cavity.