To Hit or Not to Hit, That Is the Question - Genome-wide Structure-Based Druggability Predictions for Pseudomonas aeruginosa Proteins

PLoS One. 2015 Sep 11;10(9):e0137279. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0137279. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative bacterium known to cause opportunistic infections in immune-compromised or immunosuppressed individuals that often prove fatal. New drugs to combat this organism are therefore sought after. To this end, we subjected the gene products of predicted perturbative genes to structure-based druggability predictions using DrugPred. Making this approach suitable for large-scale predictions required the introduction of new methods for calculation of descriptors, development of a workflow to identify suitable pockets in homologous proteins and establishment of criteria to obtain valid druggability predictions based on homologs. We were able to identify 29 perturbative proteins of P. aeruginosa that may contain druggable pockets, including some of them with no or no drug-like inhibitors deposited in ChEMBL. These proteins form promising novel targets for drug discovery against P. aeruginosa.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Anti-Bacterial Agents / chemistry*
  • Anti-Bacterial Agents / pharmacokinetics
  • Bacterial Proteins / chemistry*
  • Bacterial Proteins / genetics*
  • Databases, Genetic
  • Drug Discovery* / methods
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Pseudomonas aeruginosa / drug effects
  • Pseudomonas aeruginosa / genetics*
  • Structure-Activity Relationship

Substances

  • Anti-Bacterial Agents
  • Bacterial Proteins

Grants and funding

This work was funded by the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013; Aeropath, http://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.