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Zhu D, Johannsen S, Masini T, Simonin C, Haupenthal J, Illarionov B, Andreas A, Awale M, Gierse RM, van der Laan T, van der Vlag R, Nasti R, Poizat M, Buhler E, Reiling N, Müller R, Fischer M, Reymond JL, Hirsch AKH. Discovery of novel drug-like antitubercular hits targeting the MEP pathway enzyme DXPS by strategic application of ligand-based virtual screening. Chem Sci 2022; 13:10686-10698. [PMID: 36320685 PMCID: PMC9491098 DOI: 10.1039/d2sc02371g] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/27/2022] [Accepted: 08/07/2022] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
In the present manuscript, we describe how we successfully used ligand-based virtual screening (LBVS) to identify two small-molecule, drug-like hit classes with excellent ADMET profiles against the difficult to address microbial enzyme 1-deoxy-d-xylulose-5-phosphate synthase (DXPS). In the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), it has become increasingly important to address novel targets such as DXPS, the first enzyme of the 2-C-methyl-d-erythritol-4-phosphate (MEP) pathway, which affords the universal isoprenoid precursors. This pathway is absent in humans but essential for pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, making it a rich source of drug targets for the development of novel anti-infectives. Standard computer-aided drug-design tools, frequently applied in other areas of drug development, often fail for targets with large, hydrophilic binding sites such as DXPS. Therefore, we introduce the concept of pseudo-inhibitors, combining the benefits of pseudo-ligands (defining a pharmacophore) and pseudo-receptors (defining anchor points in the binding site), for providing the basis to perform a LBVS against M. tuberculosis DXPS. Starting from a diverse set of reference ligands showing weak inhibition of the orthologue from Deinococcus radiodurans DXPS, we identified three structurally unrelated classes with promising in vitro (against M. tuberculosis DXPS) and whole-cell activity including extensively drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis. The hits were validated to be specific inhibitors of DXPS and to have a unique mechanism of inhibition. Furthermore, two of the hits have a balanced profile in terms of metabolic and plasma stability and display a low frequency of resistance development, making them ideal starting points for hit-to-lead optimization of antibiotics with an unprecedented mode of action. We identified two drug-like antitubercular hits with submicromolar inhibition constants against the target 1-deoxy-d-xylulose-5-phosphate synthase (DXPS) with a new mode of action and promising activity against drug-resistant tuberculosis.![]()
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Affiliation(s)
- Di Zhu
- Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) - Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
- Department of Pharmacy, Saarland University, Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
- Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen Nijenborgh 7 9747 AG Groningen The Netherlands
| | - Sandra Johannsen
- Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) - Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
- Department of Pharmacy, Saarland University, Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
| | - Tiziana Masini
- Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen Nijenborgh 7 9747 AG Groningen The Netherlands
| | - Céline Simonin
- Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Bern Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Jörg Haupenthal
- Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) - Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
| | - Boris Illarionov
- Hamburg School of Food Science, Institute of Food Chemistry Grindelallee 117 20146 Hamburg Germany
| | - Anastasia Andreas
- Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) - Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
- Department of Pharmacy, Saarland University, Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Bern Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Robin M Gierse
- Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) - Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
- Department of Pharmacy, Saarland University, Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
- Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen Nijenborgh 7 9747 AG Groningen The Netherlands
| | - Tridia van der Laan
- Department of Mycobacteria, National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Diagnostics and Laboratory Surveillance (IDS) Infectious Diseases Research Antonie van Leeuwenhoeklaan 9 3721 MA Bilthoven The Netherlands
| | - Ramon van der Vlag
- Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen Nijenborgh 7 9747 AG Groningen The Netherlands
| | - Rita Nasti
- Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen Nijenborgh 7 9747 AG Groningen The Netherlands
| | - Mael Poizat
- Symeres Kadijk 3 9747 AT Groningen The Netherlands
| | - Eric Buhler
- Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes (MSC), UMR CNRS 7057, Université Paris Cité Bâtiment Condorcet 75205 Paris Cedex 13 France
| | - Norbert Reiling
- RG Microbial Interface Biology, Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Lung Center Borstel Germany
- German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), Partner Site Hamburg-Lübeck-Borstel-Riems Borstel Germany
| | - Rolf Müller
- Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) - Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
- Department of Pharmacy, Saarland University, Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
- Helmholtz International Lab for Anti-infectives Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
| | - Markus Fischer
- Hamburg School of Food Science, Institute of Food Chemistry Grindelallee 117 20146 Hamburg Germany
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Bern Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Anna K H Hirsch
- Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) - Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
- Department of Pharmacy, Saarland University, Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
- Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen Nijenborgh 7 9747 AG Groningen The Netherlands
- Helmholtz International Lab for Anti-infectives Campus Building E8.1 66123 Saarbrücken Germany
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Pujol‐Giménez J, Poirier M, Bühlmann S, Schuppisser C, Bhardwaj R, Awale M, Visini R, Javor S, Hediger MA, Reymond J. Inhibitors of Human Divalent Metal Transporters DMT1 (SLC11A2) and ZIP8 (SLC39A8) from a GDB-17 Fragment Library. ChemMedChem 2021; 16:3306-3314. [PMID: 34309203 PMCID: PMC8596699 DOI: 10.1002/cmdc.202100467] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/02/2021] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
Solute carrier proteins (SLCs) are membrane proteins controlling fluxes across biological membranes and represent an emerging class of drug targets. Here we searched for inhibitors of divalent metal transporters in a library of 1,676 commercially available 3D-shaped fragment-like molecules from the generated database GDB-17, which lists all possible organic molecules up to 17 atoms of C, N, O, S and halogen following simple criteria for chemical stability and synthetic feasibility. While screening against DMT1 (SLC11A2), an iron transporter associated with hemochromatosis and for which only very few inhibitors are known, only yielded two weak inhibitors, our approach led to the discovery of the first inhibitor of ZIP8 (SLC39A8), a zinc transporter associated with manganese homeostasis and osteoarthritis but with no previously reported pharmacology, demonstrating that this target is druggable.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jonai Pujol‐Giménez
- Department of Biomedical Research and Department of Nephrology and Hypertension Membrane Transport Discovery Lab Inselspital, Bern University HospitalUniversity of BernCH-3010BernSwitzerland
| | - Marion Poirier
- Department of Chemistry Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical SciencesUniversity of BernFreiestrasse 33012BernSwitzerland
| | - Sven Bühlmann
- Department of Chemistry Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical SciencesUniversity of BernFreiestrasse 33012BernSwitzerland
| | - Céline Schuppisser
- Department of Chemistry Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical SciencesUniversity of BernFreiestrasse 33012BernSwitzerland
| | - Rajesh Bhardwaj
- Department of Biomedical Research and Department of Nephrology and Hypertension Membrane Transport Discovery Lab Inselspital, Bern University HospitalUniversity of BernCH-3010BernSwitzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical SciencesUniversity of BernFreiestrasse 33012BernSwitzerland
| | - Ricardo Visini
- Department of Chemistry Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical SciencesUniversity of BernFreiestrasse 33012BernSwitzerland
| | - Sacha Javor
- Department of Chemistry Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical SciencesUniversity of BernFreiestrasse 33012BernSwitzerland
| | - Matthias A. Hediger
- Department of Biomedical Research and Department of Nephrology and Hypertension Membrane Transport Discovery Lab Inselspital, Bern University HospitalUniversity of BernCH-3010BernSwitzerland
| | - Jean‐Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical SciencesUniversity of BernFreiestrasse 33012BernSwitzerland
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3
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Abstract
Large databases of biologically relevant molecules, such as ChEMBL, SureChEMBL, or compound collections of pharmaceutical or agrochemical companies, are invaluable sources of medicinal chemistry information, albeit implicit. We developed a modified matched molecular pair approach to systematically and exhaustively extract the transformations in these databases and distill them into snippets of explicit design knowledge that are easily interpretable and directly applicable. The resulting "playbooks of medicinal chemistry design moves" capture the collective pharmaceutical and agrochemical research expertise across multiple chemists, companies, targets, and projects. They can be queried in an automated fashion for systematic prospective design and compound generation. The ChEMBL playbook and an application to exploit it are available at https://github.com/mahendra-awale/medchem_moves.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Computer-Aided Drug Design/Therapeutic Modalities, Roche Innovation Center Basel, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Grenzacherstrasse 124, 4070 Basel, Switzerland
| | - Jérôme Hert
- Computer-Aided Drug Design/Therapeutic Modalities, Roche Innovation Center Basel, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Grenzacherstrasse 124, 4070 Basel, Switzerland
| | - Laura Guasch
- Computer-Aided Drug Design/Therapeutic Modalities, Roche Innovation Center Basel, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Grenzacherstrasse 124, 4070 Basel, Switzerland
| | - Sereina Riniker
- Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, ETH Zürich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 2, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland
| | - Christian Kramer
- Computer-Aided Drug Design/Therapeutic Modalities, Roche Innovation Center Basel, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Grenzacherstrasse 124, 4070 Basel, Switzerland
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4
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Abstract
Generation and prioritization of new molecules are the most central part of the drug design process. Matched molecular series analysis (MMSA) has recently been proposed as a formal approach that captures both of these key elements of design. In order to better understand the power of MMSA and its specific limitations, we here evaluate its performance as an ADME property prediction tool. We use four large and diverse inhouse data sets, logD, microsomal clearance, CYP2C9, and CYP3A4 inhibition. MMSA follows the concept of parallel structure-activity relationship (SAR), where if two identical substituent series on different scaffolds show similarity in their property profiles, SAR from one series can be transferred to the other series. We test four different similarity metrics to identify pairs of molecular series where information can be transferred. We find that the best prediction performance is achieved by a combination of centered root-mean-square deviation (cRMSD) and a network score approach previously published by Keefer et al. However, cRMSD alone strikes the best balance between accuracy and the number of predictions that can be made. We identify statistical metrics that allow estimating when MMSA predictions will work, similar to the well-known applicability domain concept in machine learning. MMSA achieves a prediction accuracy that is comparable to a standard machine-learning model and matched molecular pair analysis. In contrast to machine learning, however, it is very easy to understand where MMSA predictions are coming from. Finally, to prospectively test the power of MMSA, we retested compounds that were strong outliers in the initial predictions and show how the MMSA model can help to identify erroneous data points.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Computer-Aided Drug Design/Therapeutic Modalities, Roche Innovation Center Basel, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Grenzacherstrasse 124, 4070 Basel, Switzerland
| | - Sereina Riniker
- Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, ETH Zürich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 2, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland
| | - Christian Kramer
- Computer-Aided Drug Design/Therapeutic Modalities, Roche Innovation Center Basel, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Grenzacherstrasse 124, 4070 Basel, Switzerland
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5
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Abstract
Chemical space is a concept to organize molecular diversity by postulating that different molecules occupy different regions of a mathematical space where the position of each molecule is defined by its properties. Our aim is to develop methods to explicitly explore chemical space in the area of drug discovery. Here we review our implementations of machine learning in this project, including our use of deep neural networks to enumerate the GDB13 database from a small sample set, to generate analogs of drugs and natural products after training with fragment-size molecules, and to predict the polypharmacology of molecules after training with known bioactive compounds from ChEMBL. We also discuss visualization methods for big data as means to keep track and learn from machine learning results. Computational tools discussed in this review are freely available at http://gdb.unibe.ch and https://github.com/reymond-group.
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Affiliation(s)
- Josep Arús-Pous
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center for Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, CH-3012 Bern
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center for Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, CH-3012 Bern
| | - Daniel Probst
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center for Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, CH-3012 Bern
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center for Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, CH-3012 Bern;,
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6
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Awale M, Sirockin F, Stiefl N, Reymond J. Cover Picture: Medicinal Chemistry Aware Database GDBMedChem (Mol. Inf. 8‐9/2019). Mol Inform 2019. [DOI: 10.1002/minf.201980801] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and BiochemistryUniversity of Bern Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Finton Sirockin
- Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research Basel Switzerland
| | - Nikolaus Stiefl
- Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research Basel Switzerland
| | - Jean‐Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and BiochemistryUniversity of Bern Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
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7
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Abstract
The generated database GDB17 enumerates 166.4 billion possible molecules up to 17 atoms of C, N, O, S and halogens following simple chemical stability and synthetic feasibility rules, however medicinal chemistry criteria are not taken into account. Here we applied rules inspired by medicinal chemistry to exclude problematic functional groups and complex molecules from GDB17, and sampled the resulting subset uniformly across molecular size, stereochemistry and polarity to form GDBMedChem as a compact collection of 10 million small molecules. This collection has reduced complexity and better synthetic accessibility than the entire GDB17 but retains higher sp3 -carbon fraction and natural product likeness scores compared to known drugs. GDBMedChem molecules are more diverse and very different from known molecules in terms of substructures and represent an unprecedented source of diversity for drug design. GDBMedChem is available for 3D-visualization, similarity searching and for download at http://gdb.unibe.ch.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Finton Sirockin
- Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Nikolaus Stiefl
- Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
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8
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Morstein J, Awale M, Reymond JL, Trauner D. Mapping the Azolog Space Enables the Optical Control of New Biological Targets. ACS Cent Sci 2019; 5:607-618. [PMID: 31041380 PMCID: PMC6487453 DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.8b00881] [Citation(s) in RCA: 50] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2018] [Indexed: 06/01/2023]
Abstract
Photopharmacology relies on molecules that change their biological activity upon irradiation. Many of these are derived from known drugs by replacing their core with an isosteric azobenzene photoswitch (azologization). The question is how many of the known bioactive ligands could be addressed in such a way. Here, we systematically assess the space of molecules amenable to azologization from databases of bioactive molecules (DrugBank, PDB, CHEMBL) and the Cambridge Structural Database. Shape similarity scoring functions (3DAPfp) and analyses of dihedral angles are employed to quantify the structural homology between a bioactive molecule and the cis or trans isomer of its corresponding azolog ("azoster") and assess which isomer is likely to be active. Our analysis suggests that a very large number of bioactive ligands (>40 000) is amenable to azologization and that many new biological targets could be addressed with photopharmacology. N-Aryl benzamides, 1,2-diarylethanes, and benzyl phenyl ethers are particularly suited for this approach, while benzylanilines and sulfonamides appear to be less well-matched. On the basis of our analysis, the majority of azosters are expected to be active in their trans form. The broad applicability of our approach is demonstrated with photoswitches that target a nuclear hormone receptor (RAR) and a lipid processing enzyme (LTA4 hydrolase).
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Affiliation(s)
- Johannes Morstein
- Department
of Chemistry, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, New York, New York 10003-6699, United States
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department
of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center for Competence in Research
NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department
of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center for Competence in Research
NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Dirk Trauner
- Department
of Chemistry, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, New York, New York 10003-6699, United States
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9
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Capecchi A, Awale M, Probst D, Reymond J. Cover Picture: PubChem and ChEMBL beyond Lipinski (Mol. Inf. 5/2019). Mol Inform 2019. [DOI: 10.1002/minf.201980501] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Alice Capecchi
- Department of Chemistry and BiochemistryUniversity of Bern Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and BiochemistryUniversity of Bern Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Daniel Probst
- Department of Chemistry and BiochemistryUniversity of Bern Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Jean‐Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and BiochemistryUniversity of Bern Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
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10
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Awale M, Sirockin F, Stiefl N, Reymond JL. Drug Analogs from Fragment-Based Long Short-Term Memory Generative Neural Networks. J Chem Inf Model 2019; 59:1347-1356. [DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.8b00902] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/10/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Finton Sirockin
- Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland
| | - Nikolaus Stiefl
- Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
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11
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Abstract
Seven million of the currently 94 million entries in the PubChem database break at least one of the four Lipinski constraints for oral bioavailability, 183,185 of which are also found in the ChEMBL database. These non-Lipinski PubChem (NLP) and ChEMBL (NLC) subsets are interesting because they contain new modalities that can display biological properties not accessible to small molecule drugs. Unfortunately, the current search tools in PubChem and ChEMBL are designed for small molecules and are not well suited to explore these subsets, which therefore remain poorly appreciated. Herein we report MXFP (macromolecule extended atom-pair fingerprint), a 217-D fingerprint tailored to analyze large molecules in terms of molecular shape and pharmacophores. We implement MXFP in two web-based applications, the first one to visualize NLP and NLC interactively using Faerun (http://faerun.gdb.tools/), the second one to perform MXFP nearest neighbor searches in NLP and NLC (http://similaritysearch.gdb.tools/). We show that these tools provide a meaningful insight into the diversity of large molecules in NLP and NLC. The interactive tools presented here are publicly available at http://gdb.unibe.ch and can be used freely to explore and better understand the diversity of non-Lipinski molecules in PubChem and ChEMBL.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alice Capecchi
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Daniel Probst
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
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12
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Delalande C, Awale M, Rubin M, Probst D, Ozhathil LC, Gertsch J, Abriel H, Reymond JL. Optimizing TRPM4 inhibitors in the MHFP6 chemical space. Eur J Med Chem 2019; 166:167-177. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ejmech.2019.01.048] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/24/2018] [Revised: 12/18/2018] [Accepted: 01/19/2019] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
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13
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Poirier M, Awale M, Roelli MA, Giuffredi GT, Ruddigkeit L, Evensen L, Stooss A, Calarco S, Lorens JB, Charles RP, Reymond JL. Front Cover: Identifying Lysophosphatidic Acid Acyltransferase β (LPAAT-β) as the Target of a Nanomolar Angiogenesis Inhibitor from a Phenotypic Screen Using the Polypharmacology Browser PPB2 (ChemMedChem 2/2019). ChemMedChem 2019. [DOI: 10.1002/cmdc.201900013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Marion Poirier
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure; University of Bern; Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure; University of Bern; Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Matthias A. Roelli
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure; University of Bern; Bühlstrasse 28 3000 Bern 9 Switzerland
| | - Guy T. Giuffredi
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure; University of Bern; Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Lars Ruddigkeit
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure; University of Bern; Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
| | - Lasse Evensen
- Department of Biomedicine, Centre for Cancer Biomarkers (CCBIO); University of Bergen; Jonas Lies vei 91 5009 Bergen Norway
| | - Amandine Stooss
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure; University of Bern; Bühlstrasse 28 3000 Bern 9 Switzerland
| | - Serafina Calarco
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure; University of Bern; Bühlstrasse 28 3000 Bern 9 Switzerland
| | - James B. Lorens
- Department of Biomedicine, Centre for Cancer Biomarkers (CCBIO); University of Bergen; Jonas Lies vei 91 5009 Bergen Norway
| | - Roch-Philippe Charles
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure; University of Bern; Bühlstrasse 28 3000 Bern 9 Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure; University of Bern; Freiestrasse 3 3012 Bern Switzerland
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14
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Abstract
Drug promiscuity or polypharmacology is the ability of small molecules to interact with multiple protein targets simultaneously. In drug discovery, understanding the polypharmacology of potential drug molecules is crucial to improve their efficacy and safety, and to discover the new therapeutic potentials of existing drugs. Over the past decade, several computational methods have been developed to study the polypharmacology of small molecules, many of which are available as Web services. In this chapter, we review some of these Web tools focusing on ligand based approaches. We highlight in particular our recently developed polypharmacology browser (PPB) and its application for finding the side targets of a new inhibitor of the TRPV6 calcium channel.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Berne, Berne, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Berne, Berne, Switzerland.
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15
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Abstract
Here we report PPB2 as a target prediction tool assigning targets to a query molecule based on ChEMBL data. PPB2 computes ligand similarities using molecular fingerprints encoding composition (MQN), molecular shape and pharmacophores (Xfp), and substructures (ECfp4) and features an unprecedented combination of nearest neighbor (NN) searches and Naı̈ve Bayes (NB) machine learning, together with simple NN searches, NB and Deep Neural Network (DNN) machine learning models as further options. Although NN(ECfp4) gives the best results in terms of recall in a 10-fold cross-validation study, combining NN searches with NB machine learning provides superior precision statistics, as well as better results in a case study predicting off-targets of a recently reported TRPV6 calcium channel inhibitor, illustrating the value of this combined approach. PPB2 is available to assess possible off-targets of small molecule drug-like compounds by public access at http://gdb.unibe.ch .
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure , University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3 , 3012 Berne , Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure , University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3 , 3012 Berne , Switzerland
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16
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Poirier M, Awale M, Roelli MA, Giuffredi GT, Ruddigkeit L, Evensen L, Stooss A, Calarco S, Lorens JB, Charles RP, Reymond JL. Identifying Lysophosphatidic Acid Acyltransferase β (LPAAT-β) as the Target of a Nanomolar Angiogenesis Inhibitor from a Phenotypic Screen Using the Polypharmacology Browser PPB2. ChemMedChem 2018; 14:224-236. [PMID: 30520265 DOI: 10.1002/cmdc.201800554] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2018] [Indexed: 12/11/2022]
Abstract
By screening a focused library of kinase inhibitor analogues in a phenotypic co-culture assay for angiogenesis inhibition, we identified an aminotriazine that acts as a cytostatic nanomolar inhibitor. However, this aminotriazine was found to be completely inactive in a whole-kinome profiling assay. To decipher its mechanism of action, we used the online target prediction tool PPB2 (http://ppb2.gdb.tools), which suggested lysophosphatidic acid acyltransferase β (LPAAT-β) as a possible target for this aminotriazine as well as several analogues identified by structure-activity relationship profiling. LPAAT-β inhibition (IC50 ≈15 nm) was confirmed in a biochemical assay and by its effects on cell proliferation in comparison with a known LPAAT-β inhibitor. These experiments illustrate the value of target-prediction tools to guide target identification for phenotypic screening hits and significantly expand the rather limited pharmacology of LPAAT-β inhibitors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marion Poirier
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Matthias A Roelli
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3000, Bern 9, Switzerland
| | - Guy T Giuffredi
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Lars Ruddigkeit
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Lasse Evensen
- Department of Biomedicine, Centre for Cancer Biomarkers (CCBIO), University of Bergen, Jonas Lies vei 91, 5009, Bergen, Norway
| | - Amandine Stooss
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3000, Bern 9, Switzerland
| | - Serafina Calarco
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3000, Bern 9, Switzerland
| | - James B Lorens
- Department of Biomedicine, Centre for Cancer Biomarkers (CCBIO), University of Bergen, Jonas Lies vei 91, 5009, Bergen, Norway
| | - Roch-Philippe Charles
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3000, Bern 9, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
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Abstract
Here, we explore the chemical space of all virtually possible organic molecules focusing on ring systems, which represent the cyclic cores of organic molecules obtained by removing all acyclic bonds and converting all remaining atoms to carbon. This approach circumvents the combinatorial explosion encountered when enumerating the molecules themselves. We report the chemical universe database GDB4c containing 916 130 ring systems up to four saturated or aromatic rings and maximum ring size of 14 atoms and GDB4c3D containing the corresponding 6 555 929 stereoisomers. Almost all (98.6%) of these ring systems are unknown and represent chiral 3D-shaped macrocycles containing small rings and quaternary centers reminiscent of polycyclic natural products. We envision that GDB4c can serve to select new ring systems from which to design analogs of such natural products. The database is available for download at www.gdb.unibe.ch together with interactive visualization and search tools as a resource for molecular design.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ricardo Visini
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Josep Arús-Pous
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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18
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure University of Bern Freiestrasse 3, CH-3012 Bern
| | - Ricardo Visini
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure University of Bern Freiestrasse 3, CH-3012 Bern
| | - Daniel Probst
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure University of Bern Freiestrasse 3, CH-3012 Bern
| | - Josep Arús-Pous
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure University of Bern Freiestrasse 3, CH-3012 Bern
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure University of Bern Freiestrasse 3, CH-3012 Bern;,
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Sebastián-Pérez V, Roca C, Awale M, Reymond JL, Martinez A, Gil C, Campillo NE. Medicinal and Biological Chemistry (MBC) Library: An Efficient Source of New Hits. J Chem Inf Model 2017; 57:2143-2151. [PMID: 28813151 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.7b00401] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Identification of new hits is one of the biggest challenges in drug discovery. Creating a library of well-characterized drug-like compounds is a key step in this process. Our group has developed an in-house chemical library called the Medicinal and Biological Chemistry (MBC) library. This collection has been successfully used to start several medicinal chemistry programs and developed in an accumulation of more than 30 years of experience in drug design and discovery of new drugs for unmet diseases. It contains over 1000 compounds, mainly heterocyclic scaffolds. In this work, analysis of drug-like properties and comparative study with well-known libraries by using different computer software are presented here.
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Affiliation(s)
- Víctor Sebastián-Pérez
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CIB, CSIC) , Ramiro de Maeztu 9, 28040 Madrid, Spain
| | - Carlos Roca
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CIB, CSIC) , Ramiro de Maeztu 9, 28040 Madrid, Spain
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Ana Martinez
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CIB, CSIC) , Ramiro de Maeztu 9, 28040 Madrid, Spain
| | - Carmen Gil
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CIB, CSIC) , Ramiro de Maeztu 9, 28040 Madrid, Spain
| | - Nuria E Campillo
- Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CIB, CSIC) , Ramiro de Maeztu 9, 28040 Madrid, Spain
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20
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Abstract
To better understand chemical space we recently enumerated the database GDB-17 containing 166.4 billion possible molecules up to 17 atoms of C, N, O, S and halogen following the simple rules of chemical stability and synthetic feasibility. However, due to the combinatorial explosion caused by systematic enumeration GDB-17 is strongly biased toward the largest, functionally and stereochemically most complex molecules and far too large for most virtual screening tools. Herein we selected a much smaller subset of GDB-17, called the fragment database FDB-17, which contains 10 million fragmentlike molecules evenly covering a broad value range for molecular size, polarity, and stereochemical complexity. The database is available at www.gdb.unibe.ch for download and free use, together with an interactive visualization application and a Web-based nearest neighbor search tool to facilitate the selection of new fragment-sized molecules for chemical synthesis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ricardo Visini
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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21
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Abstract
The concept of chemical space provides a convenient framework to analyze large collections of molecules by placing them in property spaces where distances represent similarities. Here we report webMolCS, a new type of web-based interface visualizing up to 5000 user-defined molecules in six different three-dimensional (3D) chemical spaces obtained by principal component analysis or similarity mapping of multidimensional property spaces describing composition (MQN: 42D molecular quantum numbers, SMIfp: 34D SMILES fingerprint), shapes and pharmacophores (APfp: 20D atom pair fingerprint, Xfp: 55D category extended atom pair fingerprint), and substructures (Sfp: 1024D binary substructure fingerprint, ECfp4:1024D extended connectivity fingerprint). Each molecule is shown as a sphere, and its structure appears on mouse over. The sphere is color-coded by similarity to the first compound in the list, by the list rank, or by a user-defined value, which reveals the relationship between any property encoded by these values and structural similarities. WebMolCS is freely available at www.gdb.unibe.ch .
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Daniel Probst
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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22
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Awale M, Reymond JL. The polypharmacology browser: a web-based multi-fingerprint target prediction tool using ChEMBL bioactivity data. J Cheminform 2017; 9:11. [PMID: 28270862 PMCID: PMC5319934 DOI: 10.1186/s13321-017-0199-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 64] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/29/2016] [Accepted: 02/10/2017] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
Background Several web-based tools have been reported recently which predict the possible targets of a small molecule by similarity to compounds of known bioactivity using molecular fingerprints (fps), however predictions in each case rely on similarities computed from only one or two fps. Considering that structural similarity and therefore the predicted targets strongly depend on the method used for comparison, it would be highly desirable to predict targets using a broader set of fps simultaneously. Results Herein, we present the polypharmacology browser (PPB), a web-based platform which predicts possible targets for small molecules by searching for nearest neighbors using ten different fps describing composition, substructures, molecular shape and pharmacophores. PPB searches through 4613 groups of at least 10 same target annotated bioactive molecules from ChEMBL and returns a list of predicted targets ranked by consensus voting scheme and p value. A validation study across 670 drugs with up to 20 targets showed that combining the predictions from all 10 fps gives the best results, with on average 50% of the known targets of a drug being correctly predicted with a hit rate of 25%. Furthermore, when profiling a new inhibitor of the calcium channel TRPV6 against 24 targets taken from a safety screen panel, we observed inhibition in 5 out of 5 targets predicted by PPB and in 7 out of 18 targets not predicted by PPB. The rate of correct (5/12) and incorrect (0/12) predictions for this compound by PPB was comparable to that of other web-based prediction tools. Conclusion PPB offers a versatile platform for target prediction based on multi-fingerprint comparisons, and is freely accessible at www.gdb.unibe.ch as a valuable support for drug discovery.. ![]() Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13321-017-0199-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR Chemical Biology and NCCR TransCure, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR Chemical Biology and NCCR TransCure, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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23
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Kilchmann F, Marcaida MJ, Kotak S, Schick T, Boss SD, Awale M, Gönczy P, Reymond JL. Discovery of a Selective Aurora A Kinase Inhibitor by Virtual Screening. J Med Chem 2016; 59:7188-211. [PMID: 27391133 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.6b00709] [Citation(s) in RCA: 52] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
Here we report the discovery of a selective inhibitor of Aurora A, a key regulator of cell division and potential anticancer target. We used the atom category extended ligand overlap score (xLOS), a 3D ligand-based virtual screening method recently developed in our group, to select 437 shape and pharmacophore analogs of reference kinase inhibitors. Biochemical screening uncovered two inhibitor series with scaffolds unprecedented among kinase inhibitors. One of them was successfully optimized by structure-based design to a potent Aurora A inhibitor (IC50 = 2 nM) with very high kinome selectivity for Aurora kinases. This inhibitor locks Aurora A in an inactive conformation and disrupts binding to its activator protein TPX2, which impairs Aurora A localization at the mitotic spindle and induces cell division defects. This phenotype can be rescued by inhibitor-resistant Aurora A mutants. The inhibitor furthermore does not induce Aurora B specific effects in cells.
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Affiliation(s)
- Falco Kilchmann
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR Chemical Biology and NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Maria J Marcaida
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR Chemical Biology and NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Sachin Kotak
- Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC), School of Life Sciences, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR Chemical Biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Thomas Schick
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR Chemical Biology and NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Silvan D Boss
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR Chemical Biology and NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR Chemical Biology and NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Pierre Gönczy
- Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC), School of Life Sciences, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR Chemical Biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) , CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR Chemical Biology and NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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24
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Abstract
Background Similarly to the periodic table for elements, chemical space offers an organizing principle for representing the diversity of organic molecules, usually in the form of multi-dimensional property spaces that are subjected to dimensionality reduction methods to obtain 3D-spaces or 2D-maps suitable for visual inspection. Unfortunately, tools to look at chemical space on the internet are currently very limited. Results Herein we present webDrugCS, a web application freely available at www.gdb.unibe.ch to visualize DrugBank (www.drugbank.ca, containing over 6000 investigational and approved drugs) in five different property spaces. WebDrugCS displays 3D-clouds of color-coded grid points representing molecules, whose structural formula is displayed on mouse over with an option to link to the corresponding molecule page at the DrugBank website. The 3D-clouds are obtained by principal component analysis of high dimensional property spaces describing constitution and topology (42D molecular quantum numbers MQN), structural features (34D SMILES fingerprint SMIfp), molecular shape (20D atom pair fingerprint APfp), pharmacophores (55D atom category extended atom pair fingerprint Xfp) and substructures (1024D binary substructure fingerprint Sfp). User defined molecules can be uploaded as SMILES lists and displayed together with DrugBank. In contrast to 2D-maps where many compounds fold onto each other, these 3D-spaces have a comparable resolution to their parent high-dimensional chemical space. Conclusion To the best of our knowledge webDrugCS is the first publicly available web tool for interactive visualization and exploration of the DrugBank chemical space in 3D. WebDrugCS works on computers, tablets and phones, and facilitates the visual exploration of DrugBank to rapidly learn about the structural diversity of small molecule drugs.webDrugCS visualization of DrugBank projected in 3D MQN space color-coded by ring count, with pointer showing the drug 5-fluorouracil. ![]()
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
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25
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Simonin C, Awale M, Brand M, van Deursen R, Schwartz J, Fine M, Kovacs G, Häfliger P, Gyimesi G, Sithampari A, Charles R, Hediger MA, Reymond J. Optimization of TRPV6 Calcium Channel Inhibitors Using a 3D Ligand‐Based Virtual Screening Method. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl 2015. [DOI: 10.1002/ange.201507320] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/10/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Céline Simonin
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Michael Brand
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Ruud van Deursen
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Julian Schwartz
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Michael Fine
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Gergely Kovacs
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Pascal Häfliger
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Gergely Gyimesi
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Abilashan Sithampari
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Roch‐Philippe Charles
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Matthias A. Hediger
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Jean‐Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
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Jin X, Awale M, Zasso M, Kostro D, Patiny L, Reymond JL. PDB-Explorer: a web-based interactive map of the protein data bank in shape space. BMC Bioinformatics 2015; 16:339. [PMID: 26493835 PMCID: PMC4619230 DOI: 10.1186/s12859-015-0776-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/29/2015] [Accepted: 10/14/2015] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Background The RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB) provides public access to experimentally determined 3D-structures of biological macromolecules (proteins, peptides and nucleic acids). While various tools are available to explore the PDB, options to access the global structural diversity of the entire PDB and to perceive relationships between PDB structures remain very limited. Methods A 136-dimensional atom pair 3D-fingerprint for proteins (3DP) counting categorized atom pairs at increasing through-space distances was designed to represent the molecular shape of PDB-entries. Nearest neighbor searches examples were reported exemplifying the ability of 3DP-similarity to identify closely related biomolecules from small peptides to enzyme and large multiprotein complexes such as virus particles. The principle component analysis was used to obtain the visualization of PDB in 3DP-space. Results The 3DP property space groups proteins and protein assemblies according to their 3D-shape similarity, yet shows exquisite ability to distinguish between closely related structures. An interactive website called PDB-Explorer is presented featuring a color-coded interactive map of PDB in 3DP-space. Each pixel of the map contains one or more PDB-entries which are directly visualized as ribbon diagrams when the pixel is selected. The PDB-Explorer website allows performing 3DP-nearest neighbor searches of any PDB-entry or of any structure uploaded as protein-type PDB file. All functionalities on the website are implemented in JavaScript in a platform-independent manner and draw data from a server that is updated daily with the latest PDB additions, ensuring complete and up-to-date coverage. The essentially instantaneous 3DP-similarity search with the PDB-Explorer provides results comparable to those of much slower 3D-alignment algorithms, and automatically clusters proteins from the same superfamilies in tight groups. Conclusion A chemical space classification of PDB based on molecular shape was obtained using a new atom-pair 3D-fingerprint for proteins and implemented in a web-based database exploration tool comprising an interactive color-coded map of the PDB chemical space and a nearest neighbor search tool. The PDB-Explorer website is freely available at www.cheminfo.org/pdbexplorer and represents an unprecedented opportunity to interactively visualize and explore the structural diversity of the PDB. ᅟ ᅟMaps of PDB in 3DP-space color-coded by heavy atom count and shape. ![]()
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12859-015-0776-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xian Jin
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Berne, Switzerland.
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Berne, Switzerland.
| | - Michaël Zasso
- Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC), Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland.
| | - Daniel Kostro
- Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC), Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland.
| | - Luc Patiny
- Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC), Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland.
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012, Berne, Switzerland.
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27
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Simonin C, Awale M, Brand M, van Deursen R, Schwartz J, Fine M, Kovacs G, Häfliger P, Gyimesi G, Sithampari A, Charles RP, Hediger MA, Reymond JL. Optimization of TRPV6 Calcium Channel Inhibitors Using a 3D Ligand-Based Virtual Screening Method. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl 2015; 54:14748-52. [PMID: 26457814 DOI: 10.1002/anie.201507320] [Citation(s) in RCA: 30] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/06/2015] [Revised: 09/02/2015] [Indexed: 12/31/2022]
Abstract
Herein, we report the discovery of the first potent and selective inhibitor of TRPV6, a calcium channel overexpressed in breast and prostate cancer, and its use to test the effect of blocking TRPV6-mediated Ca(2+)-influx on cell growth. The inhibitor was discovered through a computational method, xLOS, a 3D-shape and pharmacophore similarity algorithm, a type of ligand-based virtual screening (LBVS) method described briefly here. Starting with a single weakly active seed molecule, two successive rounds of LBVS followed by optimization by chemical synthesis led to a selective molecule with 0.3 μM inhibition of TRPV6. The ability of xLOS to identify different scaffolds early in LBVS was essential to success. The xLOS method may be generally useful to develop tool compounds for poorly characterized targets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Céline Simonin
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Michael Brand
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Ruud van Deursen
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Julian Schwartz
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Michael Fine
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Gergely Kovacs
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Pascal Häfliger
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Gergely Gyimesi
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Abilashan Sithampari
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Roch-Philippe Charles
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)
| | - Matthias A Hediger
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Bern (Switzerland).
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern (Switzerland).
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Awale M, Reymond JL. Similarity Mapplet: Interactive Visualization of the Directory of Useful Decoys and ChEMBL in High Dimensional Chemical Spaces. J Chem Inf Model 2015. [PMID: 26207526 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.5b00182] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/31/2022]
Abstract
An Internet portal accessible at www.gdb.unibe.ch has been set up to automatically generate color-coded similarity maps of the ChEMBL database in relation to up to two sets of active compounds taken from the enhanced Directory of Useful Decoys (eDUD), a random set of molecules, or up to two sets of user-defined reference molecules. These maps visualize the relationships between the selected compounds and ChEMBL in six different high dimensional chemical spaces, namely MQN (42-D molecular quantum numbers), SMIfp (34-D SMILES fingerprint), APfp (20-D shape fingerprint), Xfp (55-D pharmacophore fingerprint), Sfp (1024-bit substructure fingerprint), and ECfp4 (1024-bit extended connectivity fingerprint). The maps are supplied in form of Java based desktop applications called "similarity mapplets" allowing interactive content browsing and linked to a "Multifingerprint Browser for ChEMBL" (also accessible directly at www.gdb.unibe.ch ) to perform nearest neighbor searches. One can obtain six similarity mapplets of ChEMBL relative to random reference compounds, 606 similarity mapplets relative to single eDUD active sets, 30,300 similarity mapplets relative to pairs of eDUD active sets, and any number of similarity mapplets relative to user-defined reference sets to help visualize the structural diversity of compound series in drug optimization projects and their relationship to other known bioactive compounds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Center of Competence in Research NCCR TransCure, University of Berne , Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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Montalbetti N, Simonin A, Simonin C, Awale M, Reymond JL, Hediger MA. Discovery and characterization of a novel non-competitive inhibitor of the divalent metal transporter DMT1/SLC11A2. Biochem Pharmacol 2015; 96:216-24. [PMID: 26047847 DOI: 10.1016/j.bcp.2015.05.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/08/2015] [Accepted: 05/05/2015] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
Divalent metal transporter-1 (SLC11A2/DMT1) uses the H(+) electrochemical gradient as the driving force to transport divalent metal ions such as Fe(2+), Mn(2+) and others metals into mammalian cells. DMT1 is ubiquitously expressed, most notably in proximal duodenum, immature erythroid cells, brain and kidney. This transporter mediates H(+)-coupled transport of ferrous iron across the apical membrane of enterocytes. In addition, in cells such as to erythroid precursors, following transferrin receptor (TfR) mediated endocytosis; it mediates H(+)-coupled exit of ferrous iron from endocytic vesicles into the cytosol. Dysfunction of human DMT1 is associated with several pathologies such as iron deficiency anemia hemochromatosis, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, as well as colorectal cancer and esophageal adenocarcinoma, making DMT1 an attractive target for drug discovery. In the present study, we performed a ligand-based virtual screening of the Princeton database (700,000 commercially available compounds) to search for pharmacophore shape analogs of recently reported DMT1 inhibitors. We discovered a new compound, named pyrimidinone 8, which mediates a reversible linear non-competitive inhibition of human DMT1 (hDMT1) transport activity with a Ki of ∼20μM. This compound does not affect hDMT1 cell surface expression and shows no dependence on extracellular pH. To our knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence that hDMT1 can be allosterically modulated by pharmacological agents. Pyrimidinone 8 represents a novel versatile tool compound and it may serve as a lead structure for the development of therapeutic compounds for pre-clinical assessment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicolas Montalbetti
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, Switzerland; Swiss National Center of Competence in Research, NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Switzerland.
| | - Alexandre Simonin
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, Switzerland; Swiss National Center of Competence in Research, NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Switzerland.
| | - Céline Simonin
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Switzerland; Swiss National Center of Competence in Research, NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Switzerland; Swiss National Center of Competence in Research, NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Switzerland; Swiss National Center of Competence in Research, NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Switzerland.
| | - Matthias A Hediger
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, Switzerland; Swiss National Center of Competence in Research, NCCR TransCure, University of Bern, Switzerland.
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Awale M, Jin X, Reymond JL. Stereoselective virtual screening of the ZINC database using atom pair 3D-fingerprints. J Cheminform 2015; 7:3. [PMID: 25750664 PMCID: PMC4352573 DOI: 10.1186/s13321-014-0051-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2014] [Accepted: 12/19/2014] [Indexed: 01/15/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Tools to explore large compound databases in search for analogs of query molecules provide a strategically important support in drug discovery to help identify available analogs of any given reference or hit compound by ligand based virtual screening (LBVS). We recently showed that large databases can be formatted for very fast searching with various 2D-fingerprints using the city-block distance as similarity measure, in particular a 2D-atom pair fingerprint (APfp) and the related category extended atom pair fingerprint (Xfp) which efficiently encode molecular shape and pharmacophores, but do not perceive stereochemistry. Here we investigated related 3D-atom pair fingerprints to enable rapid stereoselective searches in the ZINC database (23.2 million 3D structures). RESULTS Molecular fingerprints counting atom pairs at increasing through-space distance intervals were designed using either all atoms (16-bit 3DAPfp) or different atom categories (80-bit 3DXfp). These 3D-fingerprints retrieved molecular shape and pharmacophore analogs (defined by OpenEye ROCS scoring functions) of 110,000 compounds from the Cambridge Structural Database with equal or better accuracy than the 2D-fingerprints APfp and Xfp, and showed comparable performance in recovering actives from decoys in the DUD database. LBVS by 3DXfp or 3DAPfp similarity was stereoselective and gave very different analogs when starting from different diastereomers of the same chiral drug. Results were also different from LBVS with the parent 2D-fingerprints Xfp or APfp. 3D- and 2D-fingerprints also gave very different results in LBVS of folded molecules where through-space distances between atom pairs are much shorter than topological distances. CONCLUSIONS 3DAPfp and 3DXfp are suitable for stereoselective searches for shape and pharmacophore analogs of query molecules in large databases. Web-browsers for searching ZINC by 3DAPfp and 3DXfp similarity are accessible at www.gdb.unibe.ch and should provide useful assistance to drug discovery projects. Graphical abstractAtom pair fingerprints based on through-space distances (3DAPfp) provide better shape encoding than atom pair fingerprints based on topological distances (APfp) as measured by the recovery of ROCS shape analogs by fp similarity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Xian Jin
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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Awale M, Reymond JL. Atom Pair 2D-Fingerprints Perceive 3D-Molecular Shape and Pharmacophores for Very Fast Virtual Screening of ZINC and GDB-17. J Chem Inf Model 2014; 54:1892-907. [DOI: 10.1021/ci500232g] [Citation(s) in RCA: 44] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/16/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and
Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and
Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne Switzerland
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Abstract
The properties of fragrance molecules in the public databases SuperScent and Flavornet were analyzed to define a “fragrance-like” (FL) property range (Heavy Atom Count ≤ 21, only C, H, O, S, (O + S) ≤ 3, Hydrogen Bond Donor ≤ 1) and the corresponding chemical space including FL molecules from PubChem (NIH repository of molecules), ChEMBL (bioactive molecules), ZINC (drug-like molecules), and GDB-13 (all possible organic molecules up to 13 atoms of C, N, O, S, Cl). The FL subsets of these databases were classified by MQN (Molecular Quantum Numbers, a set of 42 integer value descriptors of molecular structure) and formatted for fast MQN-similarity searching and interactive exploration of color-coded principal component maps in form of the FL-mapplet and FL-browser applications freely available at http://www.gdb.unibe.ch. MQN-similarity is shown to efficiently recover 15 different fragrance molecule families from the different FL subsets, demonstrating the relevance of the MQN-based tool to explore the fragrance chemical space.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lars Ruddigkeit
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
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Bürgi JJ, Awale M, Boss SD, Schaer T, Marger F, Viveros-Paredes JM, Bertrand S, Gertsch J, Bertrand D, Reymond JL. Discovery of potent positive allosteric modulators of the α3β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor by a chemical space walk in ChEMBL. ACS Chem Neurosci 2014; 5:346-59. [PMID: 24593915 DOI: 10.1021/cn4002297] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/16/2023] Open
Abstract
While a plethora of ligands are known for the well studied α7 and α4β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR), only very few ligands address the related α3β2 nAChR expressed in the central nervous system and at the neuromuscular junction. Starting with the public database ChEMBL organized in the chemical space of Molecular Quantum Numbers (MQN, a series of 42 integer value descriptors of molecular structure), a visual survey of nearest neighbors of the α7 nAChR partial agonist N-(3R)-1-azabicyclo[2.2.2]oct-3-yl-4-chlorobenzamide (PNU-282,987) pointed to N-(2-halobenzyl)-3-aminoquinuclidines as possible nAChR modulators. This simple "chemical space walk" was performed using a web-browser available at www.gdb.unibe.ch . Electrophysiological recordings revealed that these ligands represent a new and to date most potent class of positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) of the α3β2 nAChR, which also exert significant effects in vivo. The present discovery highlights the value of surveying chemical space neighbors of known drugs within public databases to uncover new pharmacology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Justus J. Bürgi
- Department
of Chemistry and Biochemistry, NCCR TransCure, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department
of Chemistry and Biochemistry, NCCR TransCure, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Silvan D. Boss
- Department
of Chemistry and Biochemistry, NCCR TransCure, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Tifany Schaer
- HiQScreen, 6 rte de Compois, 1222 Vésenaz, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Fabrice Marger
- HiQScreen, 6 rte de Compois, 1222 Vésenaz, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Juan M. Viveros-Paredes
- Departamento
de Farmacobiología CUCEI, Universidad de Guadalajara, 44430 Guadalajara, Jalisco, México
| | - Sonia Bertrand
- HiQScreen, 6 rte de Compois, 1222 Vésenaz, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Jürg Gertsch
- Institute
of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Berne, Bühlstrasse 28, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Daniel Bertrand
- HiQScreen, 6 rte de Compois, 1222 Vésenaz, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department
of Chemistry and Biochemistry, NCCR TransCure, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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Abstract
To confirm the activity of an initial small molecule 'hit compound' from an activity screening, one needs to probe the structure-activity relationships by testing close analogs. The multi-fingerprint browser presented here (http://dcb-reymond23.unibe.ch:8080/MCSS/) enables one to rapidly identify such close analogs among commercially available compounds in the ZINC database (>13 million molecules). The browser retrieves nearest neighbors of any query molecule in multi-dimensional chemical spaces defined by four different fingerprints, each of which represents relevant structural and pharmacophoric features in a different way: sFP (substructure fingerprint), ECFP4 (extended connectivity fingerprint), MQNs (molecular quantum numbers) and SMIfp (SMILES fingerprint). Distances are calculated using the city-block distance, a similarity measure that performs as well as Tanimoto similarity but is much faster to compute. The list of up to 1000 nearest neighbors of any query molecule is retrieved by the browser and can be then clustered using the K-means clustering algorithm to produce a focused list of analogs with likely similar bioactivity to be considered for experimental evaluation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, Berne-3012, Switzerland
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, Berne-3012, Switzerland
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Affiliation(s)
- Tina M. Kouri
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, Tampa, Florida 33620, United States
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3013 Bern, Switzerland
| | - James K. Slyby
- Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines, 1500
Illinois Street, Golden, Colorado 80401, United States
| | - Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Freiestrasse 3, 3013 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Dinesh P. Mehta
- Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines, 1500
Illinois Street, Golden, Colorado 80401, United States
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Ruddigkeit L, Awale M, Reymond JL. Mining the depths of chemical space for new nicotinic ligands. Biochem Pharmacol 2013. [DOI: 10.1016/j.bcp.2013.08.038] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
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Schwartz J, Awale M, Reymond JL. SMIfp (SMILES fingerprint) chemical space for virtual screening and visualization of large databases of organic molecules. J Chem Inf Model 2013; 53:1979-89. [PMID: 23845040 DOI: 10.1021/ci400206h] [Citation(s) in RCA: 46] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/16/2023]
Abstract
SMIfp (SMILES fingerprint) is defined here as a scalar fingerprint describing organic molecules by counting the occurrences of 34 different symbols in their SMILES strings, which creates a 34-dimensional chemical space. Ligand-based virtual screening using the city-block distance CBD(SMIfp) as similarity measure provides good AUC values and enrichment factors for recovering series of actives from the directory of useful decoys (DUD-E) and from ZINC. DrugBank, ChEMBL, ZINC, PubChem, GDB-11, GDB-13, and GDB-17 can be searched by CBD(SMIfp) using an online SMIfp-browser at www.gdb.unibe.ch. Visualization of the SMIfp chemical space was performed by principal component analysis and color-coded maps of the (PC1, PC2)-planes, with interactive access to the molecules enabled by the Java application SMIfp-MAPPLET available from www.gdb.unibe.ch. These maps spread molecules according to their fraction of aromatic atoms, size and polarity. SMIfp provides a new and relevant entry to explore the small molecule chemical space.
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Affiliation(s)
- Julian Schwartz
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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Awale M, van Deursen R, Reymond JL. MQN-mapplet: visualization of chemical space with interactive maps of DrugBank, ChEMBL, PubChem, GDB-11, and GDB-13. J Chem Inf Model 2013; 53:509-18. [PMID: 23297797 DOI: 10.1021/ci300513m] [Citation(s) in RCA: 46] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/21/2023]
Abstract
The MQN-mapplet is a Java application giving access to the structure of small molecules in large databases via color-coded maps of their chemical space. These maps are projections from a 42-dimensional property space defined by 42 integer value descriptors called molecular quantum numbers (MQN), which count different categories of atoms, bonds, polar groups, and topological features and categorize molecules by size, rigidity, and polarity. Despite its simplicity, MQN-space is relevant to biological activities. The MQN-mapplet allows localization of any molecule on the color-coded images, visualization of the molecules, and identification of analogs as neighbors on the MQN-map or in the original 42-dimensional MQN-space. No query molecule is necessary to start the exploration, which may be particularly attractive for nonchemists. To our knowledge, this type of interactive exploration tool is unprecedented for very large databases such as PubChem and GDB-13 (almost one billion molecules). The application is freely available for download at www.gdb.unibe.ch.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, NCCR TransCure, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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Reymond JL, Awale M. Exploring chemical space for drug discovery using the chemical universe database. ACS Chem Neurosci 2012; 3:649-57. [PMID: 23019491 DOI: 10.1021/cn3000422] [Citation(s) in RCA: 165] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/18/2012] [Accepted: 04/25/2012] [Indexed: 01/20/2023] Open
Abstract
Herein we review our recent efforts in searching for bioactive ligands by enumeration and virtual screening of the unknown chemical space of small molecules. Enumeration from first principles shows that almost all small molecules (>99.9%) have never been synthesized and are still available to be prepared and tested. We discuss open access sources of molecules, the classification and representation of chemical space using molecular quantum numbers (MQN), its exhaustive enumeration in form of the chemical universe generated databases (GDB), and examples of using these databases for prospective drug discovery. MQN-searchable GDB, PubChem, and DrugBank are freely accessible at www.gdb.unibe.ch.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jean-Louis Reymond
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
| | - Mahendra Awale
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Berne, Freiestrasse 3, 3012 Berne, Switzerland
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Awale M, Reymond JL. Cluster analysis of the DrugBank chemical space using molecular quantum numbers. Bioorg Med Chem 2012; 20:5372-8. [DOI: 10.1016/j.bmc.2012.03.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2012] [Revised: 03/01/2012] [Accepted: 03/05/2012] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
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Dudhatra G, Mody S, Patel H, Modi C, Chukewar A, Kumar A, Awale M. Prostaglandins and its analogues : An approach for treatment of anoestrus and to enhance breeding efficiency. Vet World 2012. [DOI: 10.5455/vetworld.2012.378-384] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022] Open
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Awale M, Kumar V, Saravanan P, Mohan CG. Homology modeling and atomic level binding study of Leishmania MAPK with inhibitors. J Mol Model 2009; 16:475-88. [PMID: 19649663 DOI: 10.1007/s00894-009-0565-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/30/2009] [Accepted: 07/08/2009] [Indexed: 12/11/2022]
Abstract
The current therapy for leishmaniasis is not sufficient and it has two severe drawbacks, host-toxicity and drug resistance. The substantial knowledge of parasite biology is not yet translating into novel drugs for leishmaniasis. Based on this observation, a 3D structural model of Leishmania mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) homologue has been developed, for the first time, by homology modeling and molecular dynamics simulation techniques. The model provided clear insight in its structure features, i.e. ATP binding pocket, phosphorylation lip, and common docking site. Sequence-structure homology recognition identified Leishmania CRK3 (LCRK3) as a distant member of the MAPK superfamily. Multiple sequence alignment and 3D structure model provided the putative ATP binding pocket of Leishmania with respect to human ERK2 and LCRK3. This analysis was helpful in identifying the binding sites and molecular function of the Leishmania specific MAPK homologue. Molecular docking study was performed on this 3D structural model, using different classes of competitive ATP inhibitors of LCRK3, to check whether they exhibit affinity and could be identified as Leishmania MAPK specific inhibitors. It is well known that MAP kinases are extracellular signal regulated kinases ERK1 and ERK2, which are components of the Ras-MAPK signal transduction pathway which is complexed with HDAC4 protein, and their inhibition is of significant therapeutic interest in cancer biology. In order to understand the mechanism of action, docking of indirubin class of molecules to the active site of histone deacetylase 4 (HDAC4) protein is performed, and the binding affinity of the protein-ligand interaction was computed. The new structural insights obtained from this study are all consistent with the available experimental data, suggesting that the homology model of the Leishmania MAPK and its ligand interaction modes are reasonable. Further the comparative molecular electrostatic potential and cavity depth analysis of Leishmania MAPK and human ERK2 suggested several important differences in its ATP binding pocket. Such differences could be exploited in the future for designing Leishmania specific MAPK inhibitors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Nagar, Punjab, India
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Awale M, Mohan CG. Molecular docking guided 3D-QSAR CoMFA analysis of N-4-Pyrimidinyl-1H-indazol-4-amine inhibitors of leukocyte-specific protein tyrosine kinase. J Mol Model 2008; 14:937-47. [PMID: 18626671 DOI: 10.1007/s00894-008-0334-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2008] [Accepted: 06/09/2008] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Inhibition of leukocyte-specific protein tyrosine kinase (Lck) activity offers one of the approaches for the treatment of T-cell mediated inflammatory disorders including rheumatoid arthritis, transplant rejection and inflammatory bowel disease. To explore the relationship between the structures of the N-4 Pyrimidinyl-1H-indazol-4-amines and their Lck inhibition, 3D-QSAR study using CoMFA analysis have been performed on a dataset of 42 molecules. The bioactive conformation of the template molecule, selected as the most potent molecule 23 from the series was obtained by performing molecular docking at the ATP binding site of Lck, which is then used to build the rest of the molecules in the series. The constructed CoMFA model is robust with r(2)(cv) of 0.603 and conventional r2 of 0.983. The predictive power of the developed model was obtained using a test set of 10 molecules, giving predictive correlation coefficient of 0.921. CoMFA contour analysis was performed to obtain useful information about the structural requirements for the Lck inhibitors which could be utilized in its future design.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahendra Awale
- Centre for Pharmacoinformatics, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Sector 67, S.A.S. Nagar, 160 062, Punjab, India
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