Abstract

Glycogen phosphorylase (GP) has been firmly proved as an important target for treatment of type 2 diabetes. With the rapid increase of type 2 diabetic patients recently, it is becoming an interesting field to discover GP inhibitor for potential antidiabetic drugs. As GP is a typical allosteric protein with several key inhibitor binding sites including the inhibitor, the catalytic, the allosteric and the new allosteric sites, the research works were mainly focused on compounds that can bind these sites and show selective inhibitory effect. This paper mainly reviewed the advances in the design of inhibitors for different binding sites of GP and aimed at providing readers with some useful hints towards more effective GP inhibitors.

Keywords: Glycogen phosphorylase, inhibitors, binding sites, type 2 diabetes, allosteric protein, metabolism, gluconeogenesis, cyclodextrins, van der Waals bonds, riboflavin