scholarly journals InterLig: improved ligand-based virtual screening using topologically independent structural alignments

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (10) ◽  
pp. 3266-3267
Author(s):  
Claudio Mirabello ◽  
Björn Wallner

Abstract Motivation In the past few years, drug discovery processes have been relying more and more on computational methods to sift out the most promising molecules before time and resources are spent to test them in experimental settings. Whenever the protein target of a given disease is not known, it becomes fundamental to have accurate methods for ligand-based virtual screening, which compares known active molecules against vast libraries of candidate compounds. Recently, 3D-based similarity methods have been developed that are capable of scaffold hopping and to superimpose matching molecules. Results Here, we present InterLig, a new method for the comparison and superposition of small molecules using topologically independent alignments of atoms. We test InterLig on a standard benchmark and show that it compares favorably to the best currently available 3D methods. Availability and implementation The program is available from http://wallnerlab.org/InterLig. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Mirabello ◽  
Björn Wallner

AbstractIn the past few years, drug discovery processes have been relying more and more on computational methods to sift out the most promising molecules before time and resources are spent to test them in experimental settings. Whenever the protein target of a given disease is not known, it becomes fundamental to have accurate methods for ligand-based Virtual Screening, which compare known active molecules against vast libraries of candidate compounds. Recently, 3D-based similarity methods have been developed that are capable of scaffold-hopping and to superimpose matching molecules. Here, we present InterLig, a new method for the comparison and superposition of small molecules based on 3D, topologically-independent alignments of atoms. We test InterLig on a standard benchmark and show that it compares favorably to the best currently available 3D methods.InterLig is open source and is available to everyone at: http://wallnerlab.org/interlig.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (20) ◽  
pp. 5109-5111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ren Kong ◽  
Guangbo Yang ◽  
Rui Xue ◽  
Ming Liu ◽  
Feng Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Motivation The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by a new type of coronavirus has been emerging from China and led to thousands of death globally since December 2019. Despite many groups have engaged in studying the newly emerged virus and searching for the treatment of COVID-19, the understanding of the COVID-19 target–ligand interactions represents a key challenge. Herein, we introduce COVID-19 Docking Server, a web server that predicts the binding modes between COVID-19 targets and the ligands including small molecules, peptides and antibodies. Results Structures of proteins involved in the virus life cycle were collected or constructed based on the homologs of coronavirus, and prepared ready for docking. The meta-platform provides a free and interactive tool for the prediction of COVID-19 target–ligand interactions and following drug discovery for COVID-19. Availability and implementation http://ncov.schanglab.org.cn. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 293-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baoyu Yang ◽  
Jing Mao ◽  
Bing Gao ◽  
Xiuli Lu

Background:Computer-assisted drug virtual screening models the process of drug screening through computer simulation technology, by docking small molecules in some of the databases to a certain protein target. There are many kinds of small molecules databases available for drug screening, including natural product databases.Methods:Plants have been used as a source of medication for millennia. About 80% of drugs were either natural products or related analogues by 1990, and many natural products are biologically active and have favorable absorption, distribution, metabolization, excretion, and toxicology.Results:In this paper, we review the natural product databases’ contributions to drug discovery based on virtual screening, focusing particularly on the introductions of plant natural products, microorganism natural product, Traditional Chinese medicine databases, as well as natural product toxicity prediction databases.Conclusion:We highlight the applications of these databases in many fields of virtual screening, and attempt to forecast the importance of the natural product database in next-generation drug discovery.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (14) ◽  
pp. 4200-4202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E V Pires ◽  
Wandré N P Veloso ◽  
YooChan Myung ◽  
Carlos H M Rodrigues ◽  
Michael Silk ◽  
...  

Abstract Summary EasyVS is a web-based platform built to simplify molecule library selection and virtual screening. With an intuitive interface, the tool allows users to go from selecting a protein target with a known structure and tailoring a purchasable molecule library to performing and visualizing docking in a few clicks. Our system also allows users to filter screening libraries based on molecule properties, cluster molecules by similarity and personalize docking parameters. Availability and implementation EasyVS is freely available as an easy-to-use web interface at http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/easyvs. Contact [email protected] or [email protected] Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 1647-1648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilal Wajid ◽  
Hasan Iqbal ◽  
Momina Jamil ◽  
Hafsa Rafique ◽  
Faria Anwar

Abstract Motivation Metabolomics is a data analysis and interpretation field aiming to study functions of small molecules within the organism. Consequently Metabolomics requires researchers in life sciences to be comfortable in downloading, installing and scripting of software that are mostly not user friendly and lack basic GUIs. As the researchers struggle with these skills, there is a dire need to develop software packages that can automatically install software pipelines truly speeding up the learning curve to build software workstations. Therefore, this paper aims to provide MetumpX, a software package that eases in the installation of 103 software by automatically resolving their individual dependencies and also allowing the users to choose which software works best for them. Results MetumpX is a Ubuntu-based software package that facilitate easy download and installation of 103 tools spread across the standard metabolomics pipeline. As far as the authors know MetumpX is the only solution of its kind where the focus lies on automating development of software workstations. Availability and implementation https://github.com/hasaniqbal777/MetumpX-bin. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masaki Tagashira

AbstractMotivationThe simultaneous consideration of sequence alignment and RNA secondary structure, or structural alignment, is known to help predict more accurate secondary structures of homologs. However, the consideration is heavy and can be done only roughly to decompose structural alignments.ResultsThe PhyloFold method, which predicts secondary structures of homologs considering likely pairwise structural alignments, was developed in this study. The method shows the best prediction accuracy while demanding comparable running time compared to conventional methods.AvailabilityThe source code of the programs implemented in this study is available on “https://github.com/heartsh/phylofold” and “https://github.com/heartsh/phyloalifold“.Contact“[email protected]”.Supplementary informationSupplementary data are available.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yizheng Fang ◽  
Qiaojun He ◽  
Ji Cao

: The evolution in research and clinical settings of targeted therapies has been inspired by the progress of cancer chemotherapy to use small molecules and monoclonal antibodies for targeting specific disease-associated genes and proteins for noninfectious chronic diseases. In addition to conventional protein inhibition and activation strategies as drug discovery modalities, new methods of targeted protein degradation and regulation using molecular glues have become an attractive approach for drug discovery. Mechanistically, molecular glues trigger interactions between the proteins that originally did not interact by forming ternary complexes as protein-protein interaction (PPI) modulators. New molecular glues and their mechanisms of action have been actively investigated in the past decades. An immunomodulatory imide drug, thalidomide, and its derivatives have been used in the clinic and are a class of molecular glue that induces degradation of several neo-substrates. In this review, we summarize the development of molecular glues and share our opinions on the identification of novel molecular glues in an attempt to promote the concept and inspire further investigations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Lucia Fallacara ◽  
Iuni Margaret Laura Tris ◽  
Amalia Belfiore ◽  
Maurizio Botta

The Drug development process has undergone a great change over the years. The way, from haphazard discovery of new natural products with a potent biological activity to a rational design of small molecule effective against a selected target, has been long and sprinkled with difficulties. The oldest drug development models are widely perceived as opaque and inefficient, with the cost of research and development continuing to rise even if the production of new drugs remains constant. The present paper, will give an overview of the principles, approaches, processes, and status of drug discovery today with an eye towards the past and the future.


Author(s):  
Haiying Lu ◽  
Qiaodan Zhou ◽  
Jun He ◽  
Zhongliang Jiang ◽  
Cheng Peng ◽  
...  

Abstract Protein–protein interactions (PPIs) have pivotal roles in life processes. The studies showed that aberrant PPIs are associated with various diseases, including cancer, infectious diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, targeting PPIs is a direction in treating diseases and an essential strategy for the development of new drugs. In the past few decades, the modulation of PPIs has been recognized as one of the most challenging drug discovery tasks. In recent years, some PPIs modulators have entered clinical studies, some of which been approved for marketing, indicating that the modulators targeting PPIs have broad prospects. Here, we summarize the recent advances in PPIs modulators, including small molecules, peptides, and antibodies, hoping to provide some guidance to the design of novel drugs targeting PPIs in the future.


2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (43) ◽  
pp. 335-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro J. Ballester ◽  
Isaac Westwood ◽  
Nicola Laurieri ◽  
Edith Sim ◽  
W. Graham Richards

There is currently a shortage of chemical molecules that can be used as bioactive probes to study molecular targets and potentially as starting points for drug discovery. One inexpensive way to address this problem is to use computational methods to screen a comprehensive database of small molecules to discover novel structures that could lead to alternative and better bioactive probes. Despite that pleasing logic the results have been somewhat mixed. Here we describe a virtual screening technique based on ligand–receptor shape complementarity, Ultrafast Shape Recognition (USR). USR is specifically applied to identify novel inhibitors of arylamine N -acetyltransferases by computationally screening almost 700 million molecular conformers in a time- and resource-efficient manner. A small number of the predicted active compounds were purchased and tested obtaining a confirmed hit rate of 40 per cent which is an outstanding result for a prospective virtual screening.


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