The Use of Scoring Functions in Drug Discovery Applications

Author(s):  
Hans-Joachim Böhm ◽  
Martin Stahl
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Ballester

Interest in docking technologies has grown parallel to the ever increasing number and diversity of 3D models for macromolecular therapeutic targets. Structure-Based Virtual Screening (SBVS) aims at leveraging these experimental structures to discover the necessary starting points for the drug discovery process. It is now established that Machine Learning (ML) can strongly enhance the predictive accuracy of scoring functions for SBVS by exploiting large datasets from targets, molecules and their associations. However, with greater choice, the question of which ML-based scoring function is the most suitable for prospective use on a given target has gained importance. Here we analyse two approaches to select an existing scoring function for the target along with a third approach consisting in generating a scoring function tailored to the target. These analyses required discussing the limitations of popular SBVS benchmarks, the alternatives to benchmark scoring functions for SBVS and how to generate them or use them using freely-available software.


Author(s):  
Sanchaita Rajkhowa ◽  
Ramesh C. Deka

Molecular docking is a key tool in structural biology and computer-assisted drug design. Molecular docking is a method which predicts the preferred orientation of a ligand when bound in an active site to form a stable complex. It is the most common method used as a structure-based drug design. Here, the authors intend to discuss the various types of docking methods and their development and applications in modern drug discovery. The important basic theories such as sampling algorithm and scoring functions have been discussed briefly. The performances of the different available docking software have also been discussed. This chapter also includes some application examples of docking studies in modern drug discovery such as targeted drug delivery using carbon nanotubes, docking of nucleic acids to find the binding modes and a comparative study between high-throughput screening and structure-based virtual screening.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Ballester

Interest in docking technologies has grown parallel to the ever increasing number and diversity of 3D models for macromolecular therapeutic targets. Structure-Based Virtual Screening (SBVS) aims at leveraging these experimental structures to discover the necessary starting points for the drug discovery process. It is now established that Machine Learning (ML) can strongly enhance the predictive accuracy of scoring functions for SBVS by exploiting large datasets from targets, molecules and their associations. However, with greater choice, the question of which ML-based scoring function is the most suitable for prospective use on a given target has gained importance. Here we analyse two approaches to select an existing scoring function for the target along with a third approach consisting in generating a scoring function tailored to the target. These analyses required discussing the limitations of popular SBVS benchmarks, the alternatives to benchmark scoring functions for SBVS and how to generate them or use them using freely-available software.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabella A. Guedes ◽  
André M. S. Barreto ◽  
Diogo Marinho ◽  
Eduardo Krempser ◽  
Mélaine A. Kuenemann ◽  
...  

AbstractScoring functions are essential for modern in silico drug discovery. However, the accurate prediction of binding affinity by scoring functions remains a challenging task. The performance of scoring functions is very heterogeneous across different target classes. Scoring functions based on precise physics-based descriptors better representing protein–ligand recognition process are strongly needed. We developed a set of new empirical scoring functions, named DockTScore, by explicitly accounting for physics-based terms combined with machine learning. Target-specific scoring functions were developed for two important drug targets, proteases and protein–protein interactions, representing an original class of molecules for drug discovery. Multiple linear regression (MLR), support vector machine and random forest algorithms were employed to derive general and target-specific scoring functions involving optimized MMFF94S force-field terms, solvation and lipophilic interactions terms, and an improved term accounting for ligand torsional entropy contribution to ligand binding. DockTScore scoring functions demonstrated to be competitive with the current best-evaluated scoring functions in terms of binding energy prediction and ranking on four DUD-E datasets and will be useful for in silico drug design for diverse proteins as well as for specific targets such as proteases and protein–protein interactions. Currently, the MLR DockTScore is available at www.dockthor.lncc.br.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy González-Alemán ◽  
Nicolas Chevrollier ◽  
Manuel Simoes ◽  
Luis Montero-Cabrera ◽  
Fabrice Leclerc

AbstractComputational fragment-based approaches are widely used in drug design and drug discovery. One of the limitations of their application is the lack of performance of docking methods, mainly the scoring functions. With the emergence of new fragment-based approaches for single-stranded RNA ligands, we propose an analysis of an MCSS-based approach evaluated for its docking power on nucleotide-binding sites. Hybrid solvent models based on some partial explicit representation are shown to improve docking and screening powers. Clustering of the n best-ranked poses can also contribute to a lesser extent to better performance. The results suggest that we can apply the approach to the fragment-based design of sequence-selective oligonucleotides.


2022 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Natarajan Arul Murugan ◽  
Artur Podobas ◽  
Davide Gadioli ◽  
Emanuele Vitali ◽  
Gianluca Palermo ◽  
...  

Drug discovery is the most expensive, time-demanding, and challenging project in biopharmaceutical companies which aims at the identification and optimization of lead compounds from large-sized chemical libraries. The lead compounds should have high-affinity binding and specificity for a target associated with a disease, and, in addition, they should have favorable pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic properties (grouped as ADMET properties). Overall, drug discovery is a multivariable optimization and can be carried out in supercomputers using a reliable scoring function which is a measure of binding affinity or inhibition potential of the drug-like compound. The major problem is that the number of compounds in the chemical spaces is huge, making the computational drug discovery very demanding. However, it is cheaper and less time-consuming when compared to experimental high-throughput screening. As the problem is to find the most stable (global) minima for numerous protein–ligand complexes (on the order of 106 to 1012), the parallel implementation of in silico virtual screening can be exploited to ensure drug discovery in affordable time. In this review, we discuss such implementations of parallelization algorithms in virtual screening programs. The nature of different scoring functions and search algorithms are discussed, together with a performance analysis of several docking softwares ported on high-performance computing architectures.


Oncology ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 891-914
Author(s):  
Sanchaita Rajkhowa ◽  
Ramesh C. Deka

Molecular docking is a key tool in structural biology and computer-assisted drug design. Molecular docking is a method which predicts the preferred orientation of a ligand when bound in an active site to form a stable complex. It is the most common method used as a structure-based drug design. Here, the authors intend to discuss the various types of docking methods and their development and applications in modern drug discovery. The important basic theories such as sampling algorithm and scoring functions have been discussed briefly. The performances of the different available docking software have also been discussed. This chapter also includes some application examples of docking studies in modern drug discovery such as targeted drug delivery using carbon nanotubes, docking of nucleic acids to find the binding modes and a comparative study between high-throughput screening and structure-based virtual screening.


Author(s):  
Zhiqiang Yan ◽  
Jin Wang

Scoring function of protein-ligand interactions is used to recognize the “native” binding pose of a ligand on the protein and to predict the binding affinity, so that the active small molecules can be discriminated from the non-active ones. Scoring function is widely used in computationally molecular docking and structure-based drug discovery. The development and improvement of scoring functions have broad implications in pharmaceutical industry and academic research. During the past three decades, much progress have been made in methodology and accuracy for scoring functions, and many successful cases have be witnessed in virtual database screening. In this chapter, the authors introduced the basic types of scoring functions and their derivations, the commonly-used evaluation methods and benchmarks, as well as the underlying challenges and current solutions. Finally, the authors discussed the promising directions to improve and develop scoring functions for future molecular docking-based drug discovery.


Author(s):  
Ahmad Abu Turab Naqvi ◽  
Md. Imtaiyaz Hassan

Molecular docking is the prediction of conformational complementarity between ligand and receptor molecule. The process of docking integrates two schematic approaches namely sampling of ligand conformations and ranking of selected conformations based on scoring functions. The authors have discussed established methodologies for molecular docking and well-known tools implementing these methods. A brief account of different classes of scoring functions such as force field based, empirical, knowledge based, and descriptor based scoring functions is given along with the exemplary implementations of these scoring functions. By replacing test and trial based ligand screening with structure based virtual screening, molecular docking has helped in shortening the duration of novel drug discovery up to some extent. However, the developments made in the field of drug discovery are assisted by the advances in the techniques of molecular docking, but there is strong need of enrichment in the techniques, especially in scoring functions, to tackle the inbound problems of de novo drug discovery.


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