Discovery of novel amide tripeptides as pancreatic lipase inhibitors by virtual screening

Pancreatic lipase (PL) is a key enzyme for the degradation of triglycerides absorbed in the diet and it is involved in several pathologies, such as acute pancreatitis, an inflammatory state of the pancreas. In this work we performed the virtual screening of a tripeptide library, with the aim to discover novel lead compounds as inhibitors of human PL. The 9 top-ranked peptides were synthesized by solid phase peptide synthesis and tested in vitro. Among them, peptides M5 and M7 were found to be the most potent inhibitors of the series, validating our method as a useful strategy to discover peptide inhibitors.