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research article

Identifying Potent Compounds Using Pairwise Consensus Methods

Xu, Marc
•
Wu, Chenyang
•
Wang, Shiyu
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May 14, 2025
Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling

Molecular docking is a widely used method within the in silico compound screening process of modern drug discovery. The accuracy of this method for predicting high-affinity small-molecule binders for a target protein from a large chemical library can be substantially improved by combining individual docking tools for cross-validation. This traditional consensus strategy typically relies on averaging scores or ranks obtained from molecular docking, which are, however, vulnerable to false positives and thus exploit shortcomings from scoring functions. To overcome this remarkable weakness, we developed here the pairwise consensus score (PCS) algorithm. PCS integrates structural similarity information on ligand−receptor complexes to evaluate predicted conformations and penalize highly dissimilar docked poses. To demonstrate the versatility of PCS, we developed a consensus docking protocol for targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that are among the most important targets for modern drug discovery. In particular, we screened a large compound library for highly potent antagonism ligands to an important GPCR therapeutic target, the neurokinin 1 receptor, and found several compounds targeting the receptor with ten-picomolar activity. Notably, these highly active compounds show a totally different chemical structure from that of previously reported NK1 binders. This opens exciting opportunities to develop drugs with unique alternative pharmacological features and therapeutic value.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1021/acs.jcim.5c00942
Author(s)
Xu, Marc

Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology

Wu, Chenyang

Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology

Wang, Shiyu
Zhan, Wenjin

Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology

Guo, Liwei

Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology

Li, Yi
Vogel, Horst  

EPFL

Yuan, Shuguang

Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology

Date Issued

2025-05-14

Publisher

American Chemical Society (ACS)

Published in
Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling
Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
PH-SB  
FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

Shenzhen Municipal Key Laboratory of Neuropsychiatric Modulation, Chinese Academy of Sciences

AlphaMol Science Ltd.

Available on Infoscience
May 19, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/250223
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