4.8 Article

Computational strategy for intrinsically disordered protein ligand design leads to the discovery of p53 transactivation domain I binding compounds that activate the p53 pathway

Journal

CHEMICAL SCIENCE
Volume 12, Issue 8, Pages 3004-3016

Publisher

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/d0sc04670a

Keywords

-

Funding

  1. Ministry of Science and Technology of China [2016YFA0502303]
  2. National Natural Science Foundation of China [21633001, 21877003]
  3. Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences at Peking University

Ask authors/readers for more resources

In this study, a hierarchical computational strategy for IDP drug discovery was proposed and successfully applied to identify two compounds that bind p53 TAD1 and restore wild-type p53 function. The study demonstrates the efficiency of IDPDVS in IDP drug discovery and the potential for direct targeting of p53 TAD1 by small molecules.
Intrinsically disordered proteins or intrinsically disordered regions (IDPs) have gained much attention in recent years due to their vital roles in biology and prevalence in various human diseases. Although IDPs are perceived as attractive therapeutic targets, rational drug design targeting IDPs remains challenging because of their conformational heterogeneity. Here, we propose a hierarchical computational strategy for IDP drug virtual screening (IDPDVS) and applied it in the discovery of p53 transactivation domain I (TAD1) binding compounds. IDPDVS starts from conformation sampling of the IDP target, then it combines stepwise conformational clustering with druggability evaluation to identify potential ligand binding pockets, followed by multiple docking screening runs and selection of compounds that can bind multi-conformations. p53 is an important tumor suppressor and restoration of its function provides an opportunity to inhibit cancer cell growth. TAD1 locates at the N-terminus of p53 and plays key roles in regulating p53 function. No compounds that directly bind to TAD1 have been reported due to its highly disordered structure. We successfully used IDPDVS to identify two compounds that bind p53 TAD1 and restore wild-type p53 function in cancer cells. Our study demonstrates that IDPDVS is an efficient strategy for IDP drug discovery and p53 TAD1 can be directly targeted by small molecules.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.8
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available