Introducing the Chemical Probes Portal

Chemical probes can be incredibly powerful reagents for understanding biology. A potent, selective, and cell-active modulator of a specific protein can be invaluable for figuring out what that protein actually does. Fragment-based methods can be effective at identifying these tool compounds, as we've described here and here.

Unfortunately, good chemical probes are difficult to discover, and scientists are left struggling with suboptimal reagents that hit multiple targets, often through pathological mechanisms. This leads to "pollution of the scientific literature," in Jonathan Baell's memorable phrasing. Despite our occasional PAINS Shaming, high-profile articles in C&EN and Nature, and even a dedicated blog, the problem continues. What is to be done?

Yesterday, a team of 53 authors from 46 academic and industrial organizations published a Commentary in Nature Chemical Biology entitled "The promise and peril of chemical probes" (see here for excellent coverage in Nature, here for Science's take, and here for In the Pipeline). This provides a good working definition for a chemical probe. According to the Structural Genomics Consortium, a chemical probe for epigenetics targets must have:

• Potency < 100 nM against the desired target
• >30-fold selectivity vs related targets
• On-target cell activity < 1 µM

It should also be profiled against a larger panel of potential off-targets, and a related inactive compound (such as a stereoisomer) should be available as a control.

After discussing examples of high-quality probes, the researchers turn their attention to what they term – rather charitably – "probes of lesser value:"

The continued use of these probes poses a major problem: tens of thousands of publications each year use them to generate research of suspect conclusions, at great cost to the taxpayer and other funders, to scientific careers and to the reliability of the scientific literature.

The authors then go on to describe best-practices. For example, even high-quality probes can give spurious results when used at high concentrations. As Paracelsus recognized five centuries ago, the dose makes the poison.

All of this is important, but as the authors acknowledge, it's been said before. What really differentiates the Commentary is the simultaneous launch of a companion web site, the Chemical Probes Portal. Its creators hope that this will lead to vigorous community discussion around questions such as:

Is there a probe for my target protein?

Which ones should I use?

How should I use this probe properly?

Is this probe suitable for use in animal models?

Currently the Portal lists just seven probes with links to references and descriptions of selectivity, solubility, and the like. All of these are “good probes,” but hopefully this will expand: the paper itself discusses the shortcomings of molecules such as staurosporine, chaetocin, obatoclax, and gossypol, and including them in the portal with detailed warnings would be valuable for the scientific community.

I hope this takes off. Understanding the natural world is hard enough even with well-behaved reagents and carefully controlled experiments. Practical Fragments will check back in a year or so to see how the site is doing. In the meantime, probe cautiously!