The human adenosine A2B receptor : Homology modeling, virtual screening, and computer-aided drug design

The adenosine A2B receptor belongs to the class A of G protein-coupled receptors. It is playing a crucial role in cell signalling and various physiological responses. The adenosine A2B receptor, a promising target in the challenge of improving human health, was and will be an important subject in the pharmacological research field. However, the X-ray structure of the adenosine A2B receptor has still not yet been resolved. Therefore, variants of a 3D homology model of the adenosine A2B receptor were generated using the crystal structures of the three related GPCRs (bovine rhodopsin, the ?2-adrenergic receptor and the adenosine A2B receptor) as templates in order to proceed with looking into binding behaviour of antagonists and agonists by computational methods.