Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Review Article | OPEN ACCESS

Structure-based drug design approach to target toll-like receptor signaling pathways for disease treatment

Mohammed Alaidarous

Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Majmaah University, Al-Majmaah 11952, PO Box 66, Saudi Arabia;

For correspondence:- Email: m.alaidarous@mu.edu.sa Tel:+966164042900

Accepted: 8 August 2017 Published: 30 September 2017

Citation: Alaidarous M. Structure-based drug design approach to target toll-like receptor signaling pathways for disease treatment. Trop J Pharm Res 2017; 16(9):2297-2302 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v16i9.35

© 2017 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling pathways are the first line of defence against many microbial organisms. The question of how TLRs recognize endogenous ligands remains controversial. Several studies have shown that TLRs are implicated in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. Therefore, in structure-based drug design, TLRs are now viewed as potential therapeutic targets in the treatment of autoimmune diseases. This review shows how proteins, specifically TLRs, are used as therapeutic targets to design inhibitors (drugs) using the structure-based drug design approach for disease treatment.

Keywords: Structure-based drug design, Toll-like receptors, Autoimmune diseases, Endogenous ligands, X-ray crystallography, Homology modeling