Nineteenth Annual Fragment-Based Drug Discovery Meeting

Last week the CHI Drug Discovery Chemistry (DDC) meeting was held in San Diego. This was the largest ever, with more than 900 participants, 95% of whom attended in person, up from 87% last year. I won’t attempt to cover all fourteen tracks but will just touch on some of the main themes.

 

Computational approaches

All four days of the conference featured dedicated sessions on machine learning and artificial intelligence, but since I was in other sessions I don’t know how relevant they were to FBLD. If you attended an interesting talk please let me know so I can watch it on-demand.

 

Among computational talks I did see, Antonina Nazarova (University of Southern California) provided an update on V-SYNTHES, which we first wrote about here. This synthon-based screening approach now covers 36 billion molecules and has been tested against eight different proteins, four of which yielded nanomolar hits when tested experimentally.

 

Computational methods have historically treated proteins as rigid, though many targets are anything but. Diane Joseph-McCarthy (Boston University) described an improvement to the pocket finding approach FTMap, called FTMove, to incorporate molecular dynamics by starting with an ensemble of different crystal structures. A further advance is E-FTMap, which expands the number of virtual probes from 16 to 119 to more finely assess ligandable sites.

 

Benjamin Walters (Genentech) described using protein dynamics to find cryptic pockets using ESP, or Experimental Structure Prediction. In this approach, experimental data from hydrogen-deuterium exchange (HDX) or chemical shift perturbations (CSPs) are used to constrain multiple parallel computational simulations, leading to better models than flexible docking, even for weak fragments.

 

Experimental approaches

Protein-detected NMR was the first practical fragment-finding method, and Steve Fesik (Vanderbilt) described using SAR by NMR to find fragments binding to the papain-like protease of SARS-CoV-2. These have been advanced to molecules with nanomolar affinity and activity in cell-based assays.

 

Andreas Lingel described the new fluorine-containing fragment library built at Novartis and how ¹⁹F NMR was used to generate inhibitors of IL-1β. We wrote about that success last year, noting that the initial fragment hit was “super-sized,” and Andreas confirmed that for trifluoromethyl-containing fragments the upper molecular weight limit was relaxed to 350 Da.

 

Sriram Tyagarajan (Merck) presented a crystallographic screen against the neurodegeneration target TTBK1 which yielded hits at 15 sites. Several potential allosteric sites were identified, but fragment growing and linking were not successful, leading them to a quick (3 month) no-go decision on the protein.

 

Virgil Woods (City University of New York) described using crystallographic screening to find hits against the challenging phosphatase PTP1B both under conventional cryogenic temperatures as well as at room temperature. As we noted about related work, there was a surprisingly poor overlap between the two sets of hits, and some fragments bound in a different manner at different temperatures.

 

Integrating FBDD and DNA-encoded libraries (DEL) for lead generation was the topic of Chaohong Sun’s talk. She noted that of some two dozen targets at AbbVie screened by both methods, 60% found hits from both, 10% found only fragment hits, and 5% found only DEL hits, with a quarter of the targets producing no hits. Hits from both approaches can be combined, as we noted here. Chaohong also noted that for both FBDD and DEL, high quality protein is essential for successful screens.

 

Covalent approaches

Covalent approaches to drug discovery are becoming ever more acceptable as more covalent drugs are approved. Understanding these in depth was the focus of Micah Niphakis (Lundbeck), who characterized 22 approved drugs containing 18 different warheads. The stability in buffer, liver microsomes, and hepatocytes varied dramatically, though more recently approved drugs tended to be more stable. Chemoproteomic studies revealed many off-targets in cells; for example, all the kinase inhibitors tested hit BTK to some extent even when this was not the primary target. The fact that the drugs are (mostly) safe and well-tolerated is a useful reminder that just because we can detect something doesn’t mean it is relevant.

 

Henry Blackwell described building a 12,000-member covalent fragment library at AstraZeneca. Due to the presence of a warhead, they relaxed rule of three parameters, with MW ranging from 250-400 Da and ClogP from 0-4. Henry also discussed the successful use of this library to identify covalent hits against the anticancer target BFL1 that were optimized to k_inact/K_I ~ 7000 M^-1s^-1. This accomplishment is all the more impressive given that screens using ASMS, DSF, ¹⁹F NMR, and SPR had all failed to yield validated hits.

 

We recently wrote about electrophilic MiniFrags, and György Keserű (Research Center for Natural Sciences, Hungary) described screening these against HDAC8 and the main protease from SARS-CoV-2. He also mentioned that the set is available for purchase from Enamine, so you can try it yourself against your favorite target.

 

As covalent modifiers become more common we will see new metrics for characterizing them, as illustrated by Benjamin Horning’s (Vividion) presentation, “Ligand Efficiency Metrics in Covalent Drug Discovery.” He described Ligand Reactivity Efficiency (LRE), defined as pTE₅₀(target, 1 hr) – pTE₅₀(glutathione, 1 hr), where TE is the target (or glutathione) engagement. LRE is analogous to LLE but focused on reactivity rather than lipophilicity. Despite my post last week, the metric could be useful, and I look forward to seeing what Dr. Saysno and friends will make of it.

 

Most covalent modifiers bind to a target and remain intact, but Nir London (Weizmann Institute) has developed Covalent Ligand Directed Release (CoLDR), in which a portion of the small molecule leaves; applications include release of fluorescent or chemiluminescent probes. Useable warheads include α-substituted methacrylamides and sulfamate acetamides.

 

Although more recent covalent drugs have targeted cysteine residues, there is growing interest in other amino acid side chains. Nir mentioned that thio-methacrylate esters can react with lysine residues, thought the kinetics are slow. And Carlo Ballatore (University of California San Diego) described hydroxy-naphthaldehyde fragments that bound reversibly to a lysine on the vascular target KRIT1.

 

Both plenary keynote speakers focused heavily on covalent chemistry. Dan Nomura (UC Berkeley) described using chemoproteomics approaches to find covalent molecules that could inhibit, degrade, or change the cellular localization of myriad proteins.

 

Finally, K. Barry Sharpless (Scripps), one of only five people to have been awarded the Nobel Prize twice, gave a rich description of sulfur (VI) fluoride exchange chemistry (SuFEx), which included drawing chemical structures on a flip chart. He presented the discovery of a fluorosulfate that is bactericidal against multiple resistant forms of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Interestingly, the molecule works by modifying a catalytic serine residue which then cyclizes to form a β-lactam. His passion for chemistry is obvious, but he also has personal reasons for pursuing the second most deadly infectious disease: his brother died of tuberculosis before effective drugs were developed. And with the rise of extensively drug resistant TB, we’ll need new ones.

 

I’ll end on that note, but please leave comments. And mark your calendar for April 14-17 next year, when DDC returns to San Diego.