Title
Enabling the hypothesis-driven prioritization of ligand candidates in big databases: Screenlamp and its application to GPCR inhibitor discovery for invasive species control.
Abstract
While the advantage of screening vast databases of molecules to cover greater molecular diversity is often mentioned, in reality, only a few studies have been published demonstrating inhibitor discovery by screening more than a million compounds for features that mimic a known three-dimensional (3D) ligand. Two factors contribute: the general difficulty of discovering potent inhibitors, and the lack of free, user-friendly software to incorporate project-specific knowledge and user hypotheses into 3D ligand-based screening. The Screenlamp modular toolkit presented here was developed with these needs in mind. We show Screenlamp’s ability to screen more than 12 million commercially available molecules and identify potent in vivo inhibitors of a G protein-coupled bile acid receptor within the first year of a discovery project. This pheromone receptor governs sea lamprey reproductive behavior, and to our knowledge, this project is the first to establish the efficacy of computational screening in discovering lead compounds for aquatic invasive species control. Significant enhancement in activity came from selecting compounds based on one of the hypotheses: that matching two distal oxygen groups in the 3D structure of the pheromone is crucial for activity. Six of the 15 most active compounds met these criteria. A second hypothesis—that presence of an alkyl sulfate side chain results in high activity—identified another 6 compounds in the top 10, demonstrating the significant benefits of hypothesis-driven screening.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10822-018-0100-7
Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design
Keywords
Field
DocType
Chemoinformatics,Computer-aided molecular design,G protein-coupled receptor,Structure based drug discovery,Structure–activity relationships,Virtual screening
G protein-coupled receptor,Ligand,Chemistry,Prioritization,BILE ACID RECEPTOR,Virtual screening,Cheminformatics,Database
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
32
3
0920-654X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
22
Authors
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sebastian Raschka1275.11
Anne M. Scott200.34
Nan Liu3104.93
Santosh Gunturu400.68
Mar Huertas500.34
Weiming Li662.53
Leslie A. Kuhn7729.55