Xu Marc, Vogel Horst, Yuan Shuguang
Research Center for Computer-Aided Drug Discovery, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Molecules. 2025 Jul 31;30(15):3216. doi: 10.3390/molecules30153216.
The glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R), which belongs to the class B1 G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) family, is an important target for treatment of metabolic disorders, including type 2 diabetes and obesity. The growing interest in GLP-1R-based therapies is driven by the development of various functional agonists as well as the huge commercial market. Thus, understanding the structural details of ligand-induced signaling are important for developing improved GLP-1R drugs. Here, we investigated the conformational dynamics of the receptor in complex with a selection of prototypical functional agonists, including CHU-128 (small molecule-biased), danuglipron (small molecule balanced), and Peptide 19 (peptide balanced), which exhibit unique, distinct binding modes and induced helix packing. Furthermore, our all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations revealed atomic feature how different those ligands led to signaling pathway preference. Our findings offer valuable insights into the mechanistic principle of GLP-1R activation, which are helpful for the rational design of next-generation GLP-1R drug molecules.
胰高血糖素样肽-1受体(GLP-1R)属于B1类G蛋白偶联受体(GPCR)家族,是治疗包括2型糖尿病和肥胖症在内的代谢紊乱的重要靶点。对基于GLP-1R的疗法日益增长的兴趣是由各种功能性激动剂的开发以及巨大的商业市场推动的。因此,了解配体诱导信号传导的结构细节对于开发改进的GLP-1R药物很重要。在这里,我们研究了该受体与一系列典型功能性激动剂(包括CHU-128(小分子偏向性)、达努格列肽(小分子平衡性)和肽19(肽平衡性))形成复合物时的构象动力学,这些激动剂表现出独特、不同的结合模式并诱导螺旋堆积。此外,我们的全原子分子动力学(MD)模拟揭示了这些不同配体导致信号通路偏好的原子特征。我们的研究结果为GLP-1R激活的机制原理提供了有价值的见解,这有助于下一代GLP-1R药物分子的合理设计。