title: Experimental validation of FINDSITE(comb) virtual ligand screening results for eight proteins yields novel nanomolar and micromolar binders.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Identification of ligand-protein binding interactions is a critical step in drug discovery. Experimental screening of large chemical libraries, in spite of their specific role and importance in drug discovery, suffer from the disadvantages of being random, time-consuming and expensive. To accelerate the process, traditional structure- or ligand-based VLS approaches are combined with experimental high-throughput screening, HTS. Often a single protein or, at most, a protein family is considered. Large scale VLS benchmarking across diverse protein families is rarely done, and the reported success rate is very low. Here, we demonstrate the experimental HTS validation of a novel VLS approach, FINDSITE(comb), across a diverse set of medically-relevant proteins.
  
  
  RESULTS
  For eight different proteins belonging to different fold-classes and from diverse organisms, the top 1% of FINDSITE(comb)'s VLS predictions were tested, and depending on the protein target, 4%-47% of the predicted ligands were shown to bind with μM or better affinities. In total, 47 small molecule binders were identified. Low nanomolar (nM) binders for dihydrofolate reductase and protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) and micromolar binders for the other proteins were identified. Six novel molecules had cytotoxic activity (<10 μg/ml) against the HCT-116 colon carcinoma cell line and one novel molecule had potent antibacterial activity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We show that FINDSITE(comb) is a promising new VLS approach that can assist drug discovery.
authors.affiliation: Center for the Study of Systems Biology, School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 250, 14th Street, N.W., Atlanta, GA 30318, USA.
authors.forename: Bharath
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Srinivasan
authors.affiliation: Center for the Study of Systems Biology, School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 250, 14th Street, N.W., Atlanta, GA 30318, USA.
authors.forename: Hongyi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: School of Biology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA ; School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Aquatic Chemical Ecology Center, Institute of Bioengineering and Biosciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kubanek
authors.affiliation: Center for the Study of Systems Biology, School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 250, 14th Street, N.W., Atlanta, GA 30318, USA.
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Skolnick
keywords: Differential scanning fluorimetry (DSF); Drug discovery; High-throughput screening (HTS); Ligand homology modeling; Virtual ligand screening (VLS)