Improving Virtual Screening Performance against Conformational Variations of Receptors by Shape Matching with Ligand Binding Pocket

2009 ◽  
Vol 49 (11) ◽  
pp. 2419-2428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Sun Lee ◽  
Cheol Soon Lee ◽  
Jeong Sook Kim ◽  
Dong Hou Kim ◽  
Han Choe
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. e1008936
Author(s):  
Jon Kapla ◽  
Ismael Rodriguez Espigares ◽  
Flavio Ballante ◽  
Jana Selent ◽  
Jens Carlsson

The determination of G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) structures at atomic resolution has improved understanding of cellular signaling and will accelerate the development of new drug candidates. However, experimental structures still remain unavailable for a majority of the GPCR family. GPCR structures and their interactions with ligands can also be modelled computationally, but such predictions have limited accuracy. In this work, we explored if molecular dynamics (MD) simulations could be used to refine the accuracy of in silico models of receptor-ligand complexes that were submitted to a community-wide assessment of GPCR structure prediction (GPCR Dock). Two simulation protocols were used to refine 30 models of the D3 dopamine receptor (D3R) in complex with an antagonist. Close to 60 μs of simulation time was generated and the resulting MD refined models were compared to a D3R crystal structure. In the MD simulations, the transmembrane helix region of the models generally drifted further away from the crystal structure conformation. However, MD refinement was able to improve the accuracy of the ligand binding mode and the second extracellular loop region. The best refinement protocol improved agreement with the experimentally observed ligand binding mode for a majority of the models. Receptor structures with improved virtual screening performance, which was assessed by molecular docking of ligands and decoys, could also be identified among the MD refined models. Application of weak restraints to the transmembrane helixes in the MD simulations further improved predictions of the ligand binding mode and second extracellular loop. These results provide guidelines for application of MD refinement in prediction of GPCR-ligand complexes and directions for further method development.


Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 1151
Author(s):  
Chenyun Guo ◽  
Zhihua Wu ◽  
Weiliang Lin ◽  
Hao Xu ◽  
Ting Chang ◽  
...  

Suramin was initially used to treat African sleeping sickness and has been clinically tested to treat human cancers and HIV infection in the recent years. However, the therapeutic index is low with numerous clinical side-effects, attributed to its diverse interactions with multiple biological macromolecules. Here, we report a novel binding target of suramin, human Raf1 kinase inhibitory protein (hRKIP), which is an important regulatory protein involved in the Ras/Raf1/MEK/ERK (MAPK) signal pathway. Biolayer interference technology showed that suramin had an intermediate affinity for binding hRKIP with a dissociation constant of 23.8 µM. Both nuclear magnetic resonance technology and molecular docking analysis revealed that suramin bound to the conserved ligand-binding pocket of hRKIP, and that residues K113, W173, and Y181 play crucial roles in hRKIP binding suramin. Furthermore, suramin treatment at 160 µM could profoundly increase the ERK phosphorylation level by around 3 times. Our results indicate that suramin binds to hRKIP and prevents hRKIP from binding with hRaf1, thus promoting the MAPK pathway. This work is beneficial to both mechanistically understanding the side-effects of suramin and efficiently improving the clinical applications of suramin.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fergus Imrie ◽  
Anthony R. Bradley ◽  
Charlotte M. Deane

An essential step in the development of virtual screening methods is the use of established sets of actives and decoys for benchmarking and training. However, the decoy molecules in commonly used sets are biased meaning that methods often exploit these biases to separate actives and decoys, rather than learning how to perform molecular recognition. This fundamental issue prevents generalisation and hinders virtual screening method development. We have developed a deep learning method (DeepCoy) that generates decoys to a user’s preferred specification in order to remove such biases or construct sets with a defined bias. We validated DeepCoy using two established benchmarks, DUD-E and DEKOIS 2.0. For all DUD-E targets and 80 of the 81 DEKOIS 2.0 targets, our generated decoy molecules more closely matched the active molecules’ physicochemical properties while introducing no discernible additional risk of false negatives. The DeepCoy decoys improved the Deviation from Optimal Embedding (DOE) score by an average of 81% and 66%, respectively, decreasing from 0.163 to 0.032 for DUD-E and from 0.109 to 0.038 for DEKOIS 2.0. Further, the generated decoys are harder to distinguish than the original decoy molecules via docking with Autodock Vina, with virtual screening performance falling from an AUC ROC of 0.71 to 0.63. The code is available at https://github.com/oxpig/DeepCoy. Generated molecules can be downloaded from http://opig.stats.ox.ac.uk/resources.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharif Anisuzzaman ◽  
Ivan M Geraskin ◽  
Muslum Ilgu ◽  
Lee Bendickson ◽  
George A Kraus ◽  
...  

The interaction of nucleic acids with their molecular targets often involves structural reorganization that may traverse a complex folding landscape. With the more recent recognition that many RNAs, both coding and noncoding, may regulate cellular activities by interacting with target molecules, it becomes increasingly important to understand the means by which nucleic acids interact with their targets and how drugs might be developed that can influence critical folding transitions. We have extensively investigated the interaction of the Spinach2 and Broccoli aptamers with a library of small molecule ligands modified by various extensions from the imido nitrogen of DFHBI (3,5-difluoro-4-hydroxybenzylidene imidazolinone) that reach out from the Spinach2 ligand binding pocket. Studies of the interaction of these compounds with the aptamers revealed that poly-fluorophenyl-modified ligands initiate a slow change in aptamer affinity that takes an extended time (half-life of ~40 min) to achieve. The change in affinity appears to involve an initial disruption of the entrance to the ligand binding pocket followed by a gradual lockdown for which the most likely driving force is an interaction of the gateway adenine with a nearby 2'OH group. These results suggest that poly-fluorophenyl modifications might increase the ability of small molecule drugs to disrupt local structure and promote RNA remodeling.


2013 ◽  
Vol 182 ◽  
pp. 73-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Jones ◽  
Peter Teal ◽  
Vincent C. Henrich ◽  
Anna Krzywonos ◽  
Agnes Sapa ◽  
...  

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