DrugPred: a structure-based approach to predict protein druggability developed using an extensive nonredundant data set

J Chem Inf Model. 2011 Nov 28;51(11):2829-42. doi: 10.1021/ci200266d. Epub 2011 Oct 13.

Abstract

Judging if a protein is able to bind orally available molecules with high affinity, i.e. if a protein is druggable, is an important step in target assessment. In order to derive a structure-based method to predict protein druggability, a comprehensive, nonredundant data set containing crystal structures of 71 druggable and 44 less druggable proteins was compiled by literature search and data mining. This data set was subsequently used to train a structure-based druggability predictor (DrugPred) using partial least-squares projection to latent structures discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). DrugPred performed well in discriminating druggable from less druggable binding sites for both internal and external predictions. The method is robust against conformational changes in the binding site and outperforms previously published methods. The superior performance of DrugPred is likely due to the size and composition of the training set which, in contrast to most previously developed methods, only contains cavities that have evolved to bind a natural ligand.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Binding Sites
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Computational Biology / statistics & numerical data
  • Data Mining
  • Databases, Protein
  • Drug Discovery / methods*
  • Drug Discovery / statistics & numerical data
  • Humans
  • Ligands*
  • Models, Molecular
  • Molecular Conformation
  • Principal Component Analysis
  • Protein Binding
  • Proteins / chemistry*
  • Proteins / metabolism
  • Software*

Substances

  • Ligands
  • Proteins