Managing missing measurements in small-molecule screens

Bigger data, collaborative tools and the future of predictive drug discovery

Over the past decade we have seen a growth in the provision of chemistry data and cheminformatics tools as either free websites or software as a service commercial offerings. These have transformed how we find molecule-related data and use such tools in our research. There have also been efforts to improve collaboration between researchers either openly or through secure transactions using commercial tools. A major challenge in the future will be how such databases and software approaches handle larger amounts of data as it accumulates from high throughput screening and enables the user to draw insights, enable predictions and move projects forward. We now discuss how information from some drug discovery datasets can be made more accessible and how privacy of data should not overwhelm the desire to share it at an appropriate time with collaborators. We also discuss additional software tools that could be made available and provide our thoughts on the future of predictive drug discovery in this age of big data. We use some examples from our own research on neglected diseases, collaborations, mobile apps and algorithm development to illustrate these ideas.

Discovery of novel drugs for promising targets

BACKGROUND

Once a promising drug target is identified, the steps to actually discover and optimize a drug are diverse and challenging.

OBJECTIVE

The goal of this study was to provide a road map to navigate drug discovery.

METHODS

Review general steps for drug discovery and provide illustrating references.

RESULTS

A number of approaches are available to enhance and accelerate target identification and validation. Consideration of a variety of potential mechanisms of action of potential drugs can guide discovery efforts. The hit to lead stage may involve techniques such as high-throughput screening, fragment-based screening, and structure-based design, with informatics playing an ever-increasing role. Biologically relevant screening models are discussed, including cell lines, 3-dimensional culture, and in vivo screening. The process of enabling human studies for an investigational drug is also discussed.

CONCLUSIONS

Drug discovery is a complex process that has significantly evolved in recent years.

Sharing chemical relationships does not reveal structures

In this study, we propose a new, secure method of sharing useful chemical information from small-molecule libraries, without revealing the structures of the libraries' molecules. Our method shares the relationship between molecules rather than structural descriptors. This is an important advance because, over the past few years, several groups have developed and published new methods of analyzing small-molecule screening data. These methods include advanced hit-picking protocols, promiscuous active filters, economic optimization algorithms, and screening visualizations, which can identify patterns in the data that might otherwise be overlooked. Application of these methods to private data requires finding strategies for sharing useful chemical data without revealing chemical structures. This problem has been examined in the context of ADME prediction models, with results from information theory suggesting it is impossible to share useful chemical information without revealing structures. In contrast, we present a new strategy for encoding the relationships between molecules instead of their structures, based on anonymized scaffold networks and trees, that safely shares enough chemical information to be useful in analyzing chemical data, while also sufficiently blinding structures from discovery. We present the details of this encoding, an analysis of the usefulness of the information it conveys, and the security of the structures it encodes. This approach makes it possible to share data across institutions, and may securely enable collaborative analysis that can yield insight into both specific projects and screening technology as a whole.