Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL) is one of the most common diseases consisting of 4% of all cancer cases. In this study, we focus on developing selective kinases as important targets for NHL therapies. The active sites of most human kinases are structurally very similar to one another. Thus when a particular kinase is inhibited, cross reactivities and unexpected side effects can occur due to the inhibition of other unrelated kinases. Even the most successful kinase inhibitor drug, imatinib, demonstrates adverse side effects and toxicities due to non-selectivity.

Specific biochemical inhibitors can be achieved if one can identify structural features that are specific to a target, and what modifications to be made to the drug to promote interactions with such features. Identification of target dehydrons could potentially enhance ligand specificity. Dehydrons are useful as they are not conserved throughout targets.

This research focuses on identifying one or more HDAC-2 inhibitors to treat Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL) , and then modifying specific HDAC-2 dehydrons to improve binding specificity of these ligands to the HDAC-2 protein. Abnormalities in the HDAC-2 results in apoptosis and differentiation and increase in proliferation, primary characteristics of cancer cells. To verify such modifications, ligands are to be iteratively tested in silico using Schrodinger’s Maestro docking platform. Out of a 10K database set, we found ten potential ligands that warrant future investigation as cancer therapies for NHL.