Identify drug repurposing candidates by mining the protein data bank.

Predicting off-targets by computational methods is gaining increasing interest in early-stage drug discovery. Here, we present a computational method based on full 3D comparisons of 3D structures. When a similar binding site is detected in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) (or any protein structure database), it is possible that the corresponding ligand also binds to that similar site.

Fast and automated functional classification with MED-SuMo: an application on purine-binding proteins.

Ligand-protein interactions are essential for biological processes, and precise characterization of protein binding sites is crucial to understand protein functions. MED-SuMo is a powerful technology to localize similar local regions on protein surfaces. Its heuristic is based on a 3D representation of macromolecules using specific surface chemical features associating chemical characteristics with geometrical properties.

Analysis of HSP90-related folds with MED-SuMo classification approach.

Three-dimensional structural information is critical for understanding functional protein properties and the precise mechanisms of protein functions implicated in physiological and pathological processes. Comparison and detection of protein binding sites are key steps for annotating structures with functional predictions and are extremely valuable steps in a drug design process. In this research area, MED-SuMo is a powerful technology to detect and characterize similar local regions on protein surfaces.

Computational fragment-based drug design to explore the hydrophobic sub-pocket of the mitotic kinesin Eg5 allosteric binding site.

Eg5, a mitotic kinesin exclusively involved in the formation and function of the mitotic spindle has attracted interest as an anticancer drug target. Eg5 is co-crystallized with several inhibitors bound to its allosteric binding pocket. Each of these occupies a pocket formed by loop 5/helix alpha2 (L5/alpha2).

A review of MED-SuMo applications.

Resolved three-dimensional protein structures are a major source of information for understanding protein functional properties. The current explosive growth of publicly available protein structures is producing large volumes of data for computational modelling and drug design methods. Target-based in silico drug design tools aid design and optimize compounds to bind to specific targets.

Computational fragment-based approach at PDB scale by protein local similarity.

The large volume of protein-ligand structures now available enables innovative and efficient protocols in computational FBDD (Fragment-Based Drug Design) to be proposed based on experimental data. In this work, we build a database of MED-Portions, where a MED-Portion is a new structural object encoding protein-fragment binding sites. MED-Portions are derived from mining all available protein-ligand structures with any library of small molecules.

MED-3DMC: a new tool to generate 3D conformation ensembles of small molecules with a Monte Carlo sampling of the conformational space.

Obtaining an efficient sampling of the low to medium energy regions of a ligand conformational space is of primary importance for getting insight into relevant binding modes of drug candidates, or for the screening of rigid molecular entities on the basis of a predefined pharmacophore or for rigid body docking. Here, we report the development of a new computer tool that samples the conformational space by using the Metropolis Monte Carlo algorithm combined with the MMFF94 van der Waals energy term. The performances of the program have been assessed on 86 drug-like molecules that resulted from an ADME/tox profiling applied on cocrystalized small molecules and were compared with the program Omega on the same dataset.

MED-SuMoLig: a new ligand-based screening tool for efficient scaffold hopping.

The identification of small molecules with selective bioactivity, whether intended as potential therapeutics or as tools for experimental research, is central to progress in medicine and in the life sciences. To facilitate such study, we have developed a ligand-based program well-suited for effective screening of large compound collections. This package, MED-SuMoLig, combines a SMARTS-driven substructure search aiming at 3D pharmacophore profiling and computation of the local atomic density of the compared molecules.

Receptor-based computational screening of compound databases: the main docking-scoring engines.

The processes used by academic and industrial scientists to discover new drugs have recently experienced a true renaissance with many new and exciting techniques. The number of protein structures and/or chemical ligands is constantly growing, through the use of parallel chemistry, X-ray crystallography, NMR or homology modeling methods and so is the theoretical understanding of protein-ligand interactions. As such, structure-based approaches to drug-design and in silico screening are becoming routine part of most modern lead discovery programs.

The SuMo server: 3D search for protein functional sites.

Unlabelled: We provide the scientific community with a web server which gives access to SuMo, a bioinformatic system for finding similarities in arbitrary 3D structures or substructures of proteins. SuMo is based on a unique representation of macromolecules using selected triplets of chemical groups having their own geometry and symmetry, regardless of the restrictive notions of main chain and lateral chains of amino acids. The heuristic for extracting similar sites was used to drive two major large-scale approaches.