Copper and Zinc Chelation as a Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder affecting millions of people in the U.S. The cause of the disease remains unknown, but amyloid- β (A β), a short peptide, is considered causal its pathogenesis. At cellular level, AD is characterized by deposits mainly composed of A β that also contain elevated levels of transition metals ions. Targeting metals is a promising new strategy for AD treatment, which uses moderately strong metal chelators to sequester them from A β or the environment. PBT2 is a chelating compound that has been the most promising in clinical trials. In our work, we use computer simulations to investigate complexes of a close analog of PBT2 with Cu2⁺ and Zn2⁺ ions. The calculations employ KS/FD DFT method, which combines Kohn-Sham DFT with the frozen-density DFT to achieve efficient description of explicit solvent beyond the first solvation shell. Our work is based on recent experiments and examines both 1:1 and 2:1 chelator-metal stochiometries detected experimentally. The results show that copper attaches more strongly than zinc, find that 1:1 complexes involve water in the first coordination shell and determine which one of several possible 2:1 geometries is the most preferable.