Design of small molecules targeting molecular chaperone system: review and perspective

Molecular chaperone system, which mainly consist of heat shock proteins family and their cochaperones, is crucial for maintaining proteostasis in life. It assists in folding, maturation and ubiquitin-proteasome-mediated degradation of proteins, thus to play a key role in cell proliferation and apoptosis. Functional disorder of molecular chaperone system is highly relevant to occurrence and development of multiple diseases including cancers, autoimmune disease/inflammatory, infective diseases, neurodegenerative disease, etc. Therefore, molecular chaperone system has long been regarded as potential drug targets. In this review, we outline the progress in the design of small molecules targeting molecular chaperone system and analyze the features of small molecules with different mechanisms. Finally, we put forward expects about potential development directions for future drug design in this field.