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Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) represent an enormous source of opportunity for therapeutic intervention. We and others have recently pinpointed key rules that will help in identifying the next generation of innovative drugs to tackle this challenging class of targets within the next decade. We used these rules to design an oriented chemical library corresponding to a set of diverse "PPI-like" modulators with cores identified as privileged structures in therapeutics. In this work, we purchased the resulting 1664 structurally diverse compounds and evaluated them on a series of representative protein-protein interfaces with distinct "druggability" potential using homogeneous time-resolved fluorescence (HTRF) technology. For certain PPI classes, analysis of the hit rates revealed up to 100 enrichment factors compared with nonoriented chemical libraries. This observation correlates with the predicted "druggability" of the targets. A specific focus on selectivity profiles, the three-dimensional (3D) molecular modes of action resolved by X-ray crystallography, and the biological activities of identified hits targeting the well-defined "druggable" bromodomains of the bromo and extraterminal (BET) family are presented as a proof-of-concept. Overall, our present study illustrates the potency of machine learning-based oriented chemical libraries to accelerate the identification of hits targeting PPIs. A generalization of this method to a larger set of compounds will accelerate the discovery of original and potent probes for this challenging class of targets.

2P2Idb is a hand-curated structural database dedicated to protein-protein interactions with known small molecule orthosteric modulators. It compiles the structural information related to orthosteric inhibitors and their target [i.e. related 3D structures available in the RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB)] and provides links to other useful databases. 2P2Idb includes all interactions for which both the protein-protein and protein-inhibitor complexes have been structurally characterized. Since its first release in 2010, the database has grown constantly and the current version contains 27 protein-protein complexes and 274 protein-inhibitor complexes corresponding to 242 unique small molecule inhibitors which represent almost a 5-fold increase compared to the previous version. A number of new data have been added, including new protein-protein complexes, binding affinities, molecular descriptors, precalculated interface parameters and links to other webservers. A new query tool has been implemented to search for inhibitors within the database using standard molecular descriptors. A novel version of the 2P2I-inspector tool has been implemented to calculate a series of physical and chemical parameters of the protein interfaces. Several geometrical parameters including planarity, eccentricity and circularity have been added as well as customizable distance cutoffs. This tool has also been extended to protein-ligand interfaces. The 2P2I database thus represents a wealth of structural source of information for scientists interested in the properties of protein-protein interactions and the design of protein-protein interaction modulators. Database URL: http://2p2idb.cnrs-mrs.fr., (© The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.)

One of the many obstacles in the development of new drugs lies in the limited number of therapeutic targets and in the quality of screening collections of compounds. In this review, we present general strategies for building target-focused chemical libraries with a particular emphasis on protein-protein interactions (PPIs). We describe the chemical spaces spanned by nine commercially available PPI-focused libraries and compare them to our 2P2I3D academic library, dedicated to orthosteric PPI modulators. We show that although PPI-focused libraries have been designed using different strategies, they share common subspaces. PPI inhibitors are larger and more hydrophobic than standard drugs; however, an effort has been made to improve the drug-likeness of focused chemical libraries dedicated to this challenging class of targets.

Low molecular weight inhibitors of Protein-Protein Interactions (PPI's) have been identified for a number of different systems indicating the viability of the computer-aided drug design approaches. However, pathways undertaken by researchers in pharmaceutical companies or in academic laboratories are not always clearly defined and the protocols that allow the identification of lead compounds often remain blurry. We will enumerate in this review the main approaches carried out to identify and validate PPI's inhibitors. Emphasis will be placed, in a first part, on issues of particular significance to PPI's such as the problem of identification and validation of interacting sites and on the methods that allow assessing the 3D structure of a targeted complex. On the second part of this review, we will define approaches that allow a rapid identification of hits capable of inhibiting PPI's. We will highlight the problem of the scoring functions and demonstrate that the majority of the functions available to researchers are not especially relevant for PPI's. We will define why consensus scoring can be an alternative and we will propose GFscore, a non linear ranked-by number consensus scoring function as a solution to this problem. We will finally discuss the actual challenges that still remain, particularly the problem of the treatment of the receptor flexibility and of the water molecules at the interface of the Protein-Protein complexes.

The Cop9 signalosome complex (CSN) regulates the functional cycle of the major E3 ubiquitin ligase family, the cullin RING E3 ubiquitin ligases (CRLs). Activated CRLs are covalently modified by the ubiquitin-like protein Nedd8 (neural precursor cell expressed developmentally down-regulated protein 8). CSN serves an essential role in myriad cellular processes by reversing this modification through the isopeptidase activity of its CSN5 subunit. CSN5 alone is inactive due to an auto-inhibited conformation of its catalytic domain. Here we report the molecular basis of CSN5 catalytic domain activation and unravel a molecular hierarchy in CSN deneddylation activity. The association of CSN5 and CSN6 MPN (for Mpr1/Pad1 N-terminal) domains activates its isopeptidase activity. The CSN5/CSN6 module, however, is inefficient in CRL deneddylation, indicating a requirement of further elements in this reaction such as other CSN subunits. A hybrid molecular model of CSN5/CSN6 provides a structural framework to explain these functional observations. Docking this model into a published CSN electron density map and using distance constraints obtained from cross-linking coupled to mass-spectrometry, we find that the C-termini of the CSN subunits could form a helical bundle in the centre of the structure. They likely play a key scaffolding role in the spatial organization of CSN and precise positioning of the dimeric MPN catalytic core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: PDZ domains are highly abundant protein-protein interaction modules involved in the wiring of protein networks. Emerging evidence indicates that some PDZ domains also interact with phosphoinositides (PtdInsPs), important regulators of cell polarization and signaling. Yet our knowledge on the prevalence, specificity, affinity, and molecular determinants of PDZ-PtdInsPs interactions and on their impact on PDZ-protein interactions is very limited. Methodology/Principal Findings: We screened the human proteome for PtdInsPs interacting PDZ domains by a combination of in vivo cell-localization studies and in vitro dot blot and Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) experiments using synthetic lipids and recombinant proteins. We found that PtdInsPs interactions contribute to the cellular distribution of some PDZ domains, intriguingly also in nuclear organelles, and that a significant subgroup of PDZ domains interacts with PtdInsPs with affinities in the low-to-mid micromolar range. In vitro specificity for the head group is low, but with a trend of higher affinities for more phosphorylated PtdInsPs species. Other membrane lipids can assist PtdInsPs-interactions. PtdInsPs-interacting PDZ domains have generally high pI values and contain characteristic clusters of basic residues, hallmarks that may be used to predict additional PtdInsPs interacting PDZ domains. In tripartite binding experiments we established that peptide binding can either compete or cooperate with PtdInsPs binding depending on the combination of ligands. Conclusions/Significance: Our screen substantially expands the set of PtdInsPs interacting PDZ domains, and shows that a full understanding of the biology of PDZ proteins will require a comprehensive insight into the intricate relationships between PDZ domains and their peptide and lipid ligands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]