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Combining Computational Methods for Hit to Lead Optimization in Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Drug Discovery

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ABSTRACT

Purpose

Tuberculosis treatments need to be shorter and overcome drug resistance. Our previous large scale phenotypic high-throughput screening against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) has identified 737 active compounds and thousands that are inactive. We have used this data for building computational models as an approach to minimize the number of compounds tested.

Methods

A cheminformatics clustering approach followed by Bayesian machine learning models (based on publicly available Mtb screening data) was used to illustrate that application of these models for screening set selections can enrich the hit rate.

Results

In order to explore chemical diversity around active cluster scaffolds of the dose–response hits obtained from our previous Mtb screens a set of 1924 commercially available molecules have been selected and evaluated for antitubercular activity and cytotoxicity using Vero, THP-1 and HepG2 cell lines with 4.3%, 4.2% and 2.7% hit rates, respectively. We demonstrate that models incorporating antitubercular and cytotoxicity data in Vero cells can significantly enrich the selection of non-toxic actives compared to random selection. Across all cell lines, the Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository (MLSMR) and cytotoxicity model identified ~10% of the hits in the top 1% screened (>10 fold enrichment). We also showed that seven out of nine Mtb active compounds from different academic published studies and eight out of eleven Mtb active compounds from a pharmaceutical screen (GSK) would have been identified by these Bayesian models.

Conclusion

Combining clustering and Bayesian models represents a useful strategy for compound prioritization and hit-to lead optimization of antitubercular agents.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND DISCLOSURES

S.E. acknowledges colleagues at CDD. Accelrys are kindly acknowledged for providing Discovery Studio. The Bayesian models created in Discovery Studio are available from the authors upon written request.

The CDD TB has been developed thanks to funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Grant#49852 “Collaborative drug discovery for TB through a novel database of SAR data optimized to promote data archiving and sharing”).

R.C.R. acknowledges the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act Grant 1RC1AI086677-01 that provided support for the presented study (National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)) – “Targeting MDR-Tuberculosis.”

S.E. acknowledges that the Bayesian models described were developed with support from Award Number R43 LM011152-01 “Biocomputation across distributed private datasets to enhance drug discovery” from the National Library of Medicine.

J.S.F. acknowledges funding from UMDNJ–NJMS and the Foundation of UMDNJ.

SE is a consultant for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Robert C. Reynolds

    Present address: Department of Chemistry, University of Alabama at Birmingham College of Arts and Sciences, 1530 3rd Avenue South, Birmingham, Alabama, 35294-1240, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Collaborative Drug Discovery, 1633 Bayshore Highway, Suite 342, Burlingame, California, 94010, USA

    Sean Ekins

  2. Collaborations in Chemistry, 5616 Hilltop Needmore Road, Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, 27526, USA

    Sean Ekins

  3. Department of Medicine, Center for Emerging and Reemerging Pathogens Rutgers University–New Jersey Medical School, 185 South Orange Avenue, Newark, New Jersey, 07103, USA

    Joel S. Freundlich

  4. Department of Pharmacology & Physiology, Rutgers University–New Jersey Medical School, 185 South Orange Avenue, Newark, New Jersey, 07103, USA

    Joel S. Freundlich

  5. Drug Discovery Division, Southern Research Institute, 2000 Ninth Avenue South, Birmingham, Alabama, 35205, USA

    Judith V. Hobrath, E. Lucile White & Robert C. Reynolds

Authors
  1. Sean Ekins
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sean Ekins.

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Table S1

1924 molecules with data used in this study with Bayesian model predictions. The complete dataset created under this grant is available as a public dataset TB: ARRA which is available upon registration http://web.collaborativedrug.com/pages/signup (XLSX 1619 kb)

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Ekins, S., Freundlich, J.S., Hobrath, J.V. et al. Combining Computational Methods for Hit to Lead Optimization in Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Drug Discovery. Pharm Res 31, 414–435 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11095-013-1172-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11095-013-1172-7

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