KRAS Binders Hidden in Nature.

Natural products have proven to be a rich source of molecular architectures for drugs. Here, an integrated approach to natural product screening is proposed, which uncovered eight new natural product scaffolds for KRAS-the most frequently mutated oncogenic driver in human cancers, which has remained thus far undrugged. The approach combines aspects of virtual screening, fragment-based screening, structure-activity relationships (SAR) by NMR, and structure-based drug discovery to overcome the limitations in traditional natural product approaches.

Direct NMR Probing of Hydration Shells of Protein Ligand Interfaces and Its Application to Drug Design.

Fragment-based drug design exploits initial screening of low molecular weight compounds and their concomitant affinity improvement. The multitude of possible chemical modifications highlights the necessity to obtain structural information about the binding mode of a fragment. Herein we describe a novel NMR methodology (LOGSY titration) that allows the determination of binding modes of low affinity binders in the protein-ligand interface and reveals suitable ligand positions for the addition of functional groups that either address or substitute protein-bound water, information of utmost importance for drug design.

Structure-Based Design of an in Vivo Active Selective BRD9 Inhibitor.

Components of the chromatin remodelling switch/sucrose nonfermentable (SWI/SNF) complex are recurrently mutated in tumors, suggesting that altering the activity of the complex plays a role in oncogenesis. However, the role that the individual subunits play in this process is not clear. We set out to develop an inhibitor compound targeting the bromodomain of BRD9 in order to evaluate its function within the SWI/SNF complex.

DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK) inhibitors. Synthesis and biological activity of quinolin-4-one and pyridopyrimidin-4-one surrogates for the chromen-4-one chemotype.

Following the discovery of dibenzo[b,d]thiophen-4-yl)-2-morpholino-4H-chromen-4-one (NU7441) ( Leahy , J. J. J.