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Xu J, Gong J, Bo X, Tong Y, Ren Z, Ni M. A benchmark for evaluation of structure-based online tools for antibody-antigen binding affinity. Biophys Chem 2024; 311:107253. [PMID: 38768531 DOI: 10.1016/j.bpc.2024.107253] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2024] [Revised: 04/08/2024] [Accepted: 04/28/2024] [Indexed: 05/22/2024]
Abstract
The prediction of binding affinity changes caused by missense mutations can elucidate antigen-antibody interactions. A few accessible structure-based online computational tools have been proposed. However, selecting suitable software for particular research is challenging, especially research on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein with antibodies. Therefore, benchmarking of the mutation-diverse SARS-CoV-2 datasets is critical. Here, we collected the datasets including 1216 variants about the changes in binding affinity of antigens from 22 complexes for SARS-CoV-2 S proteins and 22 monoclonal antibodies as well as applied them to evaluate the performance of seven binding affinity prediction tools. The tested tools' Pearson correlations between predicted and measured changes in binding affinity were between -0.158 and 0.657, while accuracy in classification tasks on predicting increasing or decreasing affinity ranged from 0.444 to 0.834. These tools performed relatively better on predicting single mutations, especially at epitope sites, whereas poor performance on extremely decreasing affinity. The tested tools were relatively insensitive to the experimental techniques used to obtain structures of complexes. In summary, we constructed a list of datasets and evaluated a range of structure-based online prediction tools that will explicate relevant processes of antigen-antibody interactions and enhance the computational design of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jiayi Xu
- College of Life Science and Technology, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China
| | - Jianting Gong
- Institute of Health Service and Transfusion Medicine, Beijing 100850, China
| | - Xiaochen Bo
- Institute of Health Service and Transfusion Medicine, Beijing 100850, China
| | - Yigang Tong
- College of Life Science and Technology, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China; Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
| | - Zilin Ren
- School of Information Science and Technology, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130117, China; Changchun Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Changchun 130122, China.
| | - Ming Ni
- Institute of Health Service and Transfusion Medicine, Beijing 100850, China.
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2
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AlJarf R, Rodrigues CHM, Myung Y, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. piscesCSM: prediction of anticancer synergistic drug combinations. J Cheminform 2024; 16:81. [PMID: 39030592 PMCID: PMC11264925 DOI: 10.1186/s13321-024-00859-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/20/2023] [Accepted: 05/12/2024] [Indexed: 07/21/2024] Open
Abstract
While drug combination therapies are of great importance, particularly in cancer treatment, identifying novel synergistic drug combinations has been a challenging venture. Computational methods have emerged in this context as a promising tool for prioritizing drug combinations for further evaluation, though they have presented limited performance, utility, and interpretability. Here, we propose a novel predictive tool, piscesCSM, that leverages graph-based representations to model small molecule chemical structures to accurately predict drug combinations with favourable anticancer synergistic effects against one or multiple cancer cell lines. Leveraging these insights, we developed a general supervised machine learning model to guide the prediction of anticancer synergistic drug combinations in over 30 cell lines. It achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of up to 0.89 on independent non-redundant blind tests, outperforming state-of-the-art approaches on both large-scale oncology screening data and an independent test set generated by AstraZeneca (with more than a 16% improvement in predictive accuracy). Moreover, by exploring the interpretability of our approach, we found that simple physicochemical properties and graph-based signatures are predictive of chemotherapy synergism. To provide a simple and integrated platform to rapidly screen potential candidate pairs with favourable synergistic anticancer effects, we made piscesCSM freely available online at https://biosig.lab.uq.edu.au/piscescsm/ as a web server and API. We believe that our predictive tool will provide a valuable resource for optimizing and augmenting combinatorial screening libraries to identify effective and safe synergistic anticancer drug combinations. SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTION: This work proposes piscesCSM, a machine-learning-based framework that relies on well-established graph-based representations of small molecules to identify and provide better predictive accuracy of syngenetic drug combinations. Our model, piscesCSM, shows that combining physiochemical properties with graph-based signatures can outperform current architectures on classification prediction tasks. Furthermore, implementing our tool as a web server offers a user-friendly platform for researchers to screen for potential synergistic drug combinations with favorable anticancer effects against one or multiple cancer cell lines.
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Affiliation(s)
- Raghad AlJarf
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
| | - Carlos H M Rodrigues
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
| | - Yoochan Myung
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
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3
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Chaudhuri D, Majumder S, Datta J, Giri K. Repurposing of therapeutic antibodies against dengue virus envelope protein receptor binding domain. Arch Microbiol 2024; 206:312. [PMID: 38900285 DOI: 10.1007/s00203-024-04039-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/06/2024] [Revised: 06/05/2024] [Accepted: 06/08/2024] [Indexed: 06/21/2024]
Abstract
Dengue virus (DENV) is the leading cause of numerous deaths every year due to its high infectivity. In this study we have tried to target the DENV envelope protein receptor binding domain, the region crucial for binding to host receptors which leads to membrane fusion and entry of the viral genome into the human host cell. We have taken 13 known FDA approved antiviral therapeutic antibodies from therapeutic antibody database and tried to repurpose them against the DENV envelope protein. Based on the humanness analysis, 10 antibodies were selected against the DENV envelope protein. Computational affinity maturation of the 10 selected antibodies was performed to increase their binding affinity and specificity against the DENV envelope protein which ultimately led to 8 mutant antibodies having better binding affinity than the native ones. Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation shows that, the stability of the complexes involving both the native and mutant antibodies were found to be the same although the binding energy between the protein and the respective antibodies was seen to improve upon computational affinity maturation. Contact analyses show similar robustness of the interaction for both the mutant and native antibodies during complex formation with the DENV envelope protein. This has led to the selection of total 18 antibodies including 10 natural and 8 affinity matured mutants which have a high probability of interacting with the DENV envelope protein. Finally, based on all these analyses along with heated MD simulation, Bamlanivimab, Etesivimab and Tixagevimab with a mutation of residue 100 of the heavy chain from serine to tyrosine were selected as prospective therapeutic antibodies to combat DENV infection. This study may open a new avenue in designing therapeutics to combat Dengue viral infection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dwaipayan Chaudhuri
- Department of Life Sciences, Presidency University, 86/1 College Street, Kolkata, 700073, India
| | - Satyabrata Majumder
- Department of Life Sciences, Presidency University, 86/1 College Street, Kolkata, 700073, India
| | - Joyeeta Datta
- Department of Life Sciences, Presidency University, 86/1 College Street, Kolkata, 700073, India
| | - Kalyan Giri
- Department of Life Sciences, Presidency University, 86/1 College Street, Kolkata, 700073, India.
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4
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Velloso JPL, de Sá AGC, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. Engineering G protein-coupled receptors for stabilization. Protein Sci 2024; 33:e5000. [PMID: 38747401 PMCID: PMC11094779 DOI: 10.1002/pro.5000] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/17/2023] [Revised: 03/21/2024] [Accepted: 04/10/2024] [Indexed: 05/19/2024]
Abstract
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are one of the most important families of targets for drug discovery. One of the limiting steps in the study of GPCRs has been their stability, with significant and time-consuming protein engineering often used to stabilize GPCRs for structural characterization and drug screening. Unfortunately, computational methods developed using globular soluble proteins have translated poorly to the rational engineering of GPCRs. To fill this gap, we propose GPCR-tm, a novel and personalized structurally driven web-based machine learning tool to study the impacts of mutations on GPCR stability. We show that GPCR-tm performs as well as or better than alternative methods, and that it can accurately rank the stability changes of a wide range of mutations occurring in various types of class A GPCRs. GPCR-tm achieved Pearson's correlation coefficients of 0.74 and 0.46 on 10-fold cross-validation and blind test sets, respectively. We observed that the (structural) graph-based signatures were the most important set of features for predicting destabilizing mutations, which points out that these signatures properly describe the changes in the environment where the mutations occur. More specifically, GPCR-tm was able to accurately rank mutations based on their effect on protein stability, guiding their rational stabilization. GPCR-tm is available through a user-friendly web server at https://biosig.lab.uq.edu.au/gpcr_tm/.
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Affiliation(s)
- João Paulo L. Velloso
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The Australian Centre for EcogenomicsThe University of QueenslandBrisbaneQueenslandAustralia
- Computational Biology and Clinical InformaticsBaker Heart and Diabetes InstituteMelbourneVictoriaAustralia
- Baker Department of Cardiometabolic HealthThe University of MelbourneParkvilleVictoriaAustralia
| | - Alex G. C. de Sá
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The Australian Centre for EcogenomicsThe University of QueenslandBrisbaneQueenslandAustralia
- Computational Biology and Clinical InformaticsBaker Heart and Diabetes InstituteMelbourneVictoriaAustralia
- Baker Department of Cardiometabolic HealthThe University of MelbourneParkvilleVictoriaAustralia
| | - Douglas E. V. Pires
- School of Computing and Information SystemsThe University of MelbourneParkvilleVictoriaAustralia
| | - David B. Ascher
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The Australian Centre for EcogenomicsThe University of QueenslandBrisbaneQueenslandAustralia
- Computational Biology and Clinical InformaticsBaker Heart and Diabetes InstituteMelbourneVictoriaAustralia
- Baker Department of Cardiometabolic HealthThe University of MelbourneParkvilleVictoriaAustralia
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5
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Khan A, Zahid MA, Mohammad A, Agouni A. Structure-guided engineering and molecular simulations to design a potent monoclonal antibody to target aP2 antigen for adaptive immune response instigation against type 2 diabetes. Front Immunol 2024; 15:1357342. [PMID: 38524133 PMCID: PMC10960362 DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1357342] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/17/2023] [Accepted: 02/08/2024] [Indexed: 03/26/2024] Open
Abstract
Introduction Diabetes mellitus (DM) is recognized as one of the oldest chronic diseases and has become a significant public health issue, necessitating innovative therapeutic strategies to enhance patient outcomes. Traditional treatments have provided limited success, highlighting the need for novel approaches in managing this complex disease. Methods In our study, we employed graph signature-based methodologies in conjunction with molecular simulation and free energy calculations. The objective was to engineer the CA33 monoclonal antibody for effective targeting of the aP2 antigen, aiming to elicit a potent immune response. This approach involved screening a mutational landscape comprising 57 mutants to identify modifications that yield significant enhancements in binding efficacy and stability. Results Analysis of the mutational landscape revealed that only five substitutions resulted in noteworthy improvements. Among these, mutations T94M, A96E, A96Q, and T94W were identified through molecular docking experiments to exhibit higher docking scores compared to the wild-type. Further validation was provided by calculating the dissociation constant (KD), which showed a similar trend in favor of these mutations. Molecular simulation analyses highlighted T94M as the most stable complex, with reduced internal fluctuations upon binding. Principal components analysis (PCA) indicated that both the wild-type and T94M mutant displayed similar patterns of constrained and restricted motion across principal components. The free energy landscape analysis underscored a single metastable state for all complexes, indicating limited structural variability and potential for high therapeutic efficacy against aP2. Total binding free energy (TBE) calculations further supported the superior performance of the T94M mutation, with TBE values demonstrating the enhanced binding affinity of selected mutants over the wild-type. Discussion Our findings suggest that the T94M substitution, along with other identified mutations, significantly enhances the therapeutic potential of the CA33 antibody against DM by improving its binding affinity and stability. These results not only contribute to a deeper understanding of antibody-antigen interactions in the context of DM but also provide a valuable framework for the rational design of antibodies aimed at targeting this disease more effectively.
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Affiliation(s)
- Abbas Khan
- Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Muhammad Ammar Zahid
- Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Anwar Mohammad
- Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dasman Diabetes Institute, Kuwait City, Kuwait
| | - Abdelali Agouni
- Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
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Clark T, Subramanian V, Jayaraman A, Fitzpatrick E, Gopal R, Pentakota N, Rurak T, Anand S, Viglione A, Raman R, Tharakaraman K, Sasisekharan R. Enhancing antibody affinity through experimental sampling of non-deleterious CDR mutations predicted by machine learning. Commun Chem 2023; 6:244. [PMID: 37945793 PMCID: PMC10636138 DOI: 10.1038/s42004-023-01037-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2023] [Accepted: 10/20/2023] [Indexed: 11/12/2023] Open
Abstract
The application of machine learning (ML) models to optimize antibody affinity to an antigen is gaining prominence. Unfortunately, the small and biased nature of the publicly available antibody-antigen interaction datasets makes it challenging to build an ML model that can accurately predict binding affinity changes due to mutations (ΔΔG). Recognizing these inherent limitations, we reformulated the problem to ask whether an ML model capable of classifying deleterious vs non-deleterious mutations can guide antibody affinity maturation in a practical setting. To test this hypothesis, we developed a Random Forest classifier (Antibody Random Forest Classifier or AbRFC) with expert-guided features and integrated it into a computational-experimental workflow. AbRFC effectively predicted non-deleterious mutations on an in-house validation dataset that is free of biases seen in the publicly available training datasets. Furthermore, experimental screening of a limited number of predictions from the model (<10^2 designs) identified affinity-enhancing mutations in two unrelated SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, resulting in constructs with up to 1000-fold increased binding to the SARS-COV-2 RBD. Our findings indicate that accurate prediction and screening of non-deleterious mutations using machine learning offers a powerful approach to improving antibody affinity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Clark
- Altus Enterprises, 900 Middlesex Turnpike, Billerica, MA, USA
| | | | - Akila Jayaraman
- Altus Enterprises, 900 Middlesex Turnpike, Billerica, MA, USA
| | | | - Ranjani Gopal
- Altus Enterprises, 900 Middlesex Turnpike, Billerica, MA, USA
| | | | - Troy Rurak
- Altus Enterprises, 900 Middlesex Turnpike, Billerica, MA, USA
| | - Shweta Anand
- Altus Enterprises, 900 Middlesex Turnpike, Billerica, MA, USA
| | | | - Rahul Raman
- Department of Biological Engineering, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
| | | | - Ram Sasisekharan
- Department of Biological Engineering, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
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7
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Yu H, Mao G, Pei Z, Cen J, Meng W, Wang Y, Zhang S, Li S, Xu Q, Sun M, Xiao K. In Vitro Affinity Maturation of Nanobodies against Mpox Virus A29 Protein Based on Computer-Aided Design. Molecules 2023; 28:6838. [PMID: 37836685 PMCID: PMC10574621 DOI: 10.3390/molecules28196838] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/22/2023] [Revised: 09/20/2023] [Accepted: 09/25/2023] [Indexed: 10/15/2023] Open
Abstract
Mpox virus (MPXV), the most pathogenic zoonotic orthopoxvirus, caused worldwide concern during the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. Growing evidence suggests that the MPXV surface protein A29 could be a specific diagnostic marker for immunological detection. In this study, a fully synthetic phage display library was screened, revealing two nanobodies (A1 and H8) that specifically recognize A29. Subsequently, an in vitro affinity maturation strategy based on computer-aided design was proposed by building and docking the A29 and A1 three-dimensional structures. Ligand-receptor binding and molecular dynamics simulations were performed to predict binding modes and key residues. Three mutant antibodies were predicted using the platform, increasing the affinity by approximately 10-fold compared with the parental form. These results will facilitate the application of computers in antibody optimization and reduce the cost of antibody development; moreover, the predicted antibodies provide a reference for establishing an immunological response against MPXV.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haiyang Yu
- School of Health Science and Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China;
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
| | - Guanchao Mao
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
| | - Zhipeng Pei
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
| | - Jinfeng Cen
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
| | - Wenqi Meng
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
| | - Yunqin Wang
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
| | - Shanshan Zhang
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
| | - Songling Li
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
| | - Qingqiang Xu
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
| | - Mingxue Sun
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
| | - Kai Xiao
- Lab of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China; (G.M.); (Z.P.); (J.C.); (W.M.); (Y.W.); (S.Z.); (S.L.)
- Marine Biomedical Science and Technology Innovation Platform of Lingang Special Area, Shanghai 201306, China
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8
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Chan WK, Williams J, Sorathia K, Pray B, Abusaleh K, Bian Z, Sharma A, Hout I, Nishat S, Hanel W, Sloan SL, Yasin A, Denlinger N, Zhang X, Muthusamy N, Vasu S, de Lima M, Yang Y, Baiocchi R, Alinari L. A novel CAR-T cell product targeting CD74 is an effective therapeutic approach in preclinical mantle cell lymphoma models. Exp Hematol Oncol 2023; 12:79. [PMID: 37740214 PMCID: PMC10517521 DOI: 10.1186/s40164-023-00437-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/22/2023] [Accepted: 08/18/2023] [Indexed: 09/24/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a rare B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtype which remains incurable despite multimodal approach including chemoimmunotherapy followed by stem cell transplant, targeted approaches such as the BTK inhibitor ibrutinib, and CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. CD74 is a nonpolymorphic type II integral membrane glycoprotein identified as an MHC class II chaperone and a receptor for macrophage migration inhibitory factor. Our group previously reported on CD74's abundant expression in MCL and its ability to increase via pharmacological inhibition of autophagosomal degradation. Milatuzumab, a fully humanized anti-CD74 monoclonal antibody, demonstrated significant activity in preclinical lymphoma models but failed to provide meaningful benefits in clinical trials mainly due to its short half-life. We hypothesized that targeting CD74 using a CAR-T cell would provide potent and durable anti-MCL activity. METHODS We engineered a second generation anti-CD74 CAR with 4-1BB and CD3ζ signaling domains (74bbz). Through in silico and rational mutagenesis on the scFV domain, the 74bbz CAR was functionally optimized for superior antigen binding affinity, proliferative signaling, and cytotoxic activity against MCL cells in vitro and in vivo. RESULTS Functionally optimized 74bbz CAR-T cells (clone 42105) induced significant killing of MCL cell lines, and primary MCL patient samples including one relapse after commercial CD19 CAR-T cell therapy with direct correlation between antigen density and cytotoxicity. It significantly prolonged the survival of an animal model established in NOD-SCIDγc-/- (NSG) mice engrafted with a human MCL cell line Mino subcutaneously compared to controls. Finally, while CD74 is also expressed on normal immune cell subsets, treatment with 74bbz CAR-T cells resulted in minimal cytotoxicity against these cells both in vitro and in vivo. CONCLUSIONS Targeting CD74 with 74bbz CAR-T cells represents a new cell therapy to provide a potent and durable and anti-MCL activity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wing Keung Chan
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Jessica Williams
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Kinnari Sorathia
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Betsy Pray
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Kaled Abusaleh
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Zehua Bian
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Archisha Sharma
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Ian Hout
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Shamama Nishat
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Walter Hanel
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Shelby L Sloan
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Aneeq Yasin
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Nathan Denlinger
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Xiaoli Zhang
- Department of Biomedical Informatics/Center for Biostatistics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Natarajan Muthusamy
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Sumithira Vasu
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Marcos de Lima
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Yiping Yang
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Robert Baiocchi
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA
| | - Lapo Alinari
- Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, 400 W. 12th Ave, 481D Wiseman Hall, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA.
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Shirvanizadeh N, Vihinen M. VariBench, new variation benchmark categories and data sets. FRONTIERS IN BIOINFORMATICS 2023; 3:1248732. [PMID: 37795169 PMCID: PMC10546188 DOI: 10.3389/fbinf.2023.1248732] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/27/2023] [Accepted: 09/08/2023] [Indexed: 10/06/2023] Open
Affiliation(s)
| | - Mauno Vihinen
- Department of Experimental Medical Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
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10
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Jessen-Howard D, Pan Q, Ascher DB. Identifying the Molecular Drivers of Pathogenic Aldehyde Dehydrogenase Missense Mutations in Cancer and Non-Cancer Diseases. Int J Mol Sci 2023; 24:10157. [PMID: 37373306 DOI: 10.3390/ijms241210157] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2023] [Revised: 06/07/2023] [Accepted: 06/08/2023] [Indexed: 06/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Human aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDHs) comprising 19 isoenzymes play a vital role on both endogenous and exogenous aldehyde metabolism. This NAD(P)-dependent catalytic process relies on the intact structural and functional activity of the cofactor binding, substrate interaction, and the oligomerization of ALDHs. Disruptions on the activity of ALDHs, however, could result in the accumulation of cytotoxic aldehydes, which have been linked with a wide range of diseases, including both cancers as well as neurological and developmental disorders. In our previous works, we have successfully characterised the structure-function relationships of the missense variants of other proteins. We, therefore, applied a similar analysis pipeline to identify potential molecular drivers of pathogenic ALDH missense mutations. Variants data were first carefully curated and labelled as cancer-risk, non-cancer diseases, and benign. We then leveraged various computational biophysical methods to describe the changes caused by missense mutations, informing a bias of detrimental mutations with destabilising effects. Cooperating with these insights, several machine learning approaches were further utilised to investigate the combination of features, revealing the necessity of the conservation of ALDHs. Our work aims to provide important biological perspectives on pathogenic consequences of missense mutations of ALDHs, which could be invaluable resources in the development of cancer treatment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dana Jessen-Howard
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
| | - Qisheng Pan
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia
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11
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Chen Z, Wang X, Chen X, Huang J, Wang C, Wang J, Wang Z. Accelerating therapeutic protein design with computational approaches toward the clinical stage. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2023; 21:2909-2926. [PMID: 38213894 PMCID: PMC10781723 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2023.04.027] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/15/2023] [Revised: 04/11/2023] [Accepted: 04/27/2023] [Indexed: 01/13/2024] Open
Abstract
Therapeutic protein, represented by antibodies, is of increasing interest in human medicine. However, clinical translation of therapeutic protein is still largely hindered by different aspects of developability, including affinity and selectivity, stability and aggregation prevention, solubility and viscosity reduction, and deimmunization. Conventional optimization of the developability with widely used methods, like display technologies and library screening approaches, is a time and cost-intensive endeavor, and the efficiency in finding suitable solutions is still not enough to meet clinical needs. In recent years, the accelerated advancement of computational methodologies has ushered in a transformative era in the field of therapeutic protein design. Owing to their remarkable capabilities in feature extraction and modeling, the integration of cutting-edge computational strategies with conventional techniques presents a promising avenue to accelerate the progression of therapeutic protein design and optimization toward clinical implementation. Here, we compared the differences between therapeutic protein and small molecules in developability and provided an overview of the computational approaches applicable to the design or optimization of therapeutic protein in several developability issues.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhidong Chen
- Department of Pathology, The Eighth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518033, China
- School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China
| | - Xinpei Wang
- School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China
| | - Xu Chen
- School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China
| | - Juyang Huang
- School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China
| | - Chenglin Wang
- Shenzhen Qiyu Biotechnology Co., Ltd, Shenzhen 518107, China
| | - Junqing Wang
- School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China
| | - Zhe Wang
- Department of Pathology, The Eighth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518033, China
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12
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Aljarf R, Tang S, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. embryoTox: Using Graph-Based Signatures to Predict the Teratogenicity of Small Molecules. J Chem Inf Model 2023; 63:432-441. [PMID: 36595441 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.2c00824] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/04/2023]
Abstract
Teratogenic drugs can lead to extreme fetal malformation and consequently critically influence the fetus's health, yet the teratogenic risks associated with most approved drugs are unknown. Here, we propose a novel predictive tool, embryoTox, which utilizes a graph-based signature representation of the chemical structure of a small molecule to predict and classify molecules likely to be safe during pregnancy. embryoTox was trained and validated using in vitro bioactivity data of over 700 small molecules with characterized teratogenicity effects. Our final model achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of up to 0.96 on 10-fold cross-validation and 0.82 on nonredundant blind tests, outperforming alternative approaches. We believe that our predictive tool will provide a practical resource for optimizing screening libraries to determine effective and safe molecules to use during pregnancy. To provide a simple and integrated platform to rapidly screen for potential safe molecules and their risk factors, we made embryoTox freely available online at https://biosig.lab.uq.edu.au/embryotox/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Raghad Aljarf
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia
| | - Simon Tang
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia
- School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Queensland, Australia
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13
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Ascher DB, Kaminskas LM, Myung Y, Pires DEV. Using Graph-Based Signatures to Guide Rational Antibody Engineering. Methods Mol Biol 2023; 2552:375-397. [PMID: 36346604 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-2609-2_21] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Antibodies are essential experimental and diagnostic tools and as biotherapeutics have significantly advanced our ability to treat a range of diseases. With recent innovations in computational tools to guide protein engineering, we can now rationally design better antibodies with improved efficacy, stability, and pharmacokinetics. Here, we describe the use of the mCSM web-based in silico suite, which uses graph-based signatures to rapidly identify the structural and functional consequences of mutations, to guide rational antibody engineering to improve stability, affinity, and specificity.
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Affiliation(s)
- David B Ascher
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia
| | - Lisa M Kaminskas
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia
| | - Yoochan Myung
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia.
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
- School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia.
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14
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Boer JC, Pan Q, Holien JK, Nguyen TB, Ascher DB, Plebanski M. A bias of Asparagine to Lysine mutations in SARS-CoV-2 outside the receptor binding domain affects protein flexibility. Front Immunol 2022; 13:954435. [PMID: 36569921 PMCID: PMC9788125 DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.954435] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/27/2022] [Accepted: 11/14/2022] [Indexed: 12/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Introduction COVID-19 pandemic has been threatening public health and economic development worldwide for over two years. Compared with the original SARS-CoV-2 strain reported in 2019, the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529.1) is more transmissible. This variant has 34 mutations in its Spike protein, 15 of which are present in the Receptor Binding Domain (RBD), facilitating viral internalization via binding to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor on endothelial cells as well as promoting increased immune evasion capacity. Methods Herein we compared SARS-CoV-2 proteins (including ORF3a, ORF7, ORF8, Nucleoprotein (N), membrane protein (M) and Spike (S) proteins) from multiple ancestral strains. We included the currently designated original Variant of Concern (VOC) Omicron, its subsequent emerged variants BA.1, BA2, BA3, BA.4, BA.5, the two currently emerging variants BQ.1 and BBX.1, and compared these with the previously circulating VOCs Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, to better understand the nature and potential impact of Omicron specific mutations. Results Only in Omicron and its subvariants, a bias toward an Asparagine to Lysine (N to K) mutation was evident within the Spike protein, including regions outside the RBD domain, while none of the regions outside the Spike protein domain were characterized by this mutational bias. Computational structural analysis revealed that three of these specific mutations located in the central core region, contribute to a preference for the alteration of conformations of the Spike protein. Several mutations in the RBD which have circulated across most Omicron subvariants were also analysed, and these showed more potential for immune escape. Conclusion This study emphasizes the importance of understanding how specific N to K mutations outside of the RBD region affect SARS-CoV-2 conformational changes and the need for neutralizing antibodies for Omicron to target a subset of conformationally dependent B cell epitopes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer C. Boer
- School of Health and Biomedical Science, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
| | - Qisheng Pan
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
| | - Jessica K. Holien
- School of Science, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
| | - Thanh-Binh Nguyen
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
| | - David B. Ascher
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
| | - Magdalena Plebanski
- School of Health and Biomedical Science, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia,*Correspondence: Magdalena Plebanski,
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15
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Iftkhar S, de Sá AGC, Velloso JPL, Aljarf R, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. cardioToxCSM: A Web Server for Predicting Cardiotoxicity of Small Molecules. J Chem Inf Model 2022; 62:4827-4836. [PMID: 36219164 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.2c00822] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
The design of novel, safe, and effective drugs to treat human diseases is a challenging venture, with toxicity being one of the main sources of attrition at later stages of development. Failure due to toxicity incurs a significant increase in costs and time to market, with multiple drugs being withdrawn from the market due to their adverse effects. Cardiotoxicity, for instance, was responsible for the failure of drugs such as fenspiride, propoxyphene, and valdecoxib. While significant effort has been dedicated to mitigate this issue by developing computational approaches that aim to identify molecules likely to be toxic, including quantitative structure-activity relationship models and machine learning methods, current approaches present limited performance and interpretability. To overcome these, we propose a new web-based computational method, cardioToxCSM, which can predict six types of cardiac toxicity outcomes, including arrhythmia, cardiac failure, heart block, hERG toxicity, hypertension, and myocardial infarction, efficiently and accurately. cardioToxCSM was developed using the concept of graph-based signatures, molecular descriptors, toxicophore matchings, and molecular fingerprints, leveraging explainable machine learning, and was validated internally via different cross validation schemes and externally via low-redundancy blind sets. The models presented robust performances with areas under ROC curves of up to 0.898 on 5-fold cross-validation, consistent with metrics on blind tests. Additionally, our models provide interpretation of the predictions by identifying whether substructures that are commonly enriched in toxic compounds were present. We believe cardioToxCSM will provide valuable insight into the potential cardiotoxicity of small molecules early on drug screening efforts. The method is made freely available as a web server at https://biosig.lab.uq.edu.au/cardiotoxcsm.
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Affiliation(s)
- Saba Iftkhar
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Queensland, Australia.,Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia
| | - Alex G C de Sá
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Queensland, Australia.,Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia.,Baker Department of Cardiometabolic Health, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Victoria, Australia
| | - João P L Velloso
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Queensland, Australia.,Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia
| | - Raghad Aljarf
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia.,Baker Department of Cardiometabolic Health, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Victoria, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia.,School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Queensland, Australia.,Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia.,Baker Department of Cardiometabolic Health, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Victoria, Australia
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16
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Nguyen TB, Myung Y, de Sá AGC, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. mmCSM-NA: accurately predicting effects of single and multiple mutations on protein-nucleic acid binding affinity. NAR Genom Bioinform 2021; 3:lqab109. [PMID: 34805992 PMCID: PMC8600011 DOI: 10.1093/nargab/lqab109] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/11/2021] [Revised: 09/20/2021] [Accepted: 10/27/2021] [Indexed: 02/02/2023] Open
Abstract
While protein-nucleic acid interactions are pivotal for many crucial biological processes, limited experimental data has made the development of computational approaches to characterise these interactions a challenge. Consequently, most approaches to understand the effects of missense mutations on protein-nucleic acid affinity have focused on single-point mutations and have presented a limited performance on independent data sets. To overcome this, we have curated the largest dataset of experimentally measured effects of mutations on nucleic acid binding affinity to date, encompassing 856 single-point mutations and 141 multiple-point mutations across 155 experimentally solved complexes. This was used in combination with an optimized version of our graph-based signatures to develop mmCSM-NA (http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/mmcsm_na), the first scalable method capable of quantitatively and accurately predicting the effects of multiple-point mutations on nucleic acid binding affinities. mmCSM-NA obtained a Pearson's correlation of up to 0.67 (RMSE of 1.06 Kcal/mol) on single-point mutations under cross-validation, and up to 0.65 on independent non-redundant datasets of multiple-point mutations (RMSE of 1.12 kcal/mol), outperforming similar tools. mmCSM-NA is freely available as an easy-to-use web-server and API. We believe it will be an invaluable tool to shed light on the role of mutations affecting protein-nucleic acid interactions in diseases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thanh Binh Nguyen
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Yoochan Myung
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Alex G C de Sá
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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17
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Rodrigues CHM, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. pdCSM-PPI: Using Graph-Based Signatures to Identify Protein-Protein Interaction Inhibitors. J Chem Inf Model 2021; 61:5438-5445. [PMID: 34719929 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.1c01135] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Protein-protein interactions are promising sites for development of selective drugs; however, they have generally been viewed as challenging targets. Molecules targeting protein-protein interactions tend to be larger and more lipophilic than other drug-like molecules, mimicking the properties of interacting interfaces. Here, we propose a machine learning approach that uses a graph-based representation of small molecules to guide identification of inhibitors modulating protein-protein interactions, pdCSM-PPI. This approach was applied to 21 different PPI targets. We developed interaction-specific models that were able to accurately identify active compounds achieving MCC and F1 scores up to 1, and Pearson's correlations up to 0.87, outperforming previous approaches. Using insights from these individual models, we developed a generic protein-protein interaction modulator predictive model, which accurately predicted IC50 with a Pearson's correlation of 0.64 on a low redundancy blind test. Importantly, we were able to accurately identify active from inactive compounds, achieving an AUC of 0.77 and sensitivity and specificity of 76% and 78%, respectively. We believe pdCSM-PPI will be an important tool to help guide more efficient screening of new PPI inhibitors; it is freely available as an easy-to-use web server and API at http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/pdcsm_ppi.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carlos H M Rodrigues
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia.,School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia.,School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia.,School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia.,School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia
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18
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Rodrigues CHM, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. mmCSM-PPI: predicting the effects of multiple point mutations on protein-protein interactions. Nucleic Acids Res 2021; 49:W417-W424. [PMID: 33893812 PMCID: PMC8262703 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkab273] [Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/27/2021] [Revised: 03/18/2021] [Accepted: 04/15/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Protein-protein interactions play a crucial role in all cellular functions and biological processes and mutations leading to their disruption are enriched in many diseases. While a number of computational methods to assess the effects of variants on protein-protein binding affinity have been proposed, they are in general limited to the analysis of single point mutations and have been shown to perform poorly on independent test sets. Here, we present mmCSM-PPI, a scalable and effective machine learning model for accurately assessing changes in protein-protein binding affinity caused by single and multiple missense mutations. We expanded our well-established graph-based signatures in order to capture physicochemical and geometrical properties of multiple wild-type residue environments and integrated them with substitution scores and dynamics terms from normal mode analysis. mmCSM-PPI was able to achieve a Pearson's correlation of up to 0.75 (RMSE = 1.64 kcal/mol) under 10-fold cross-validation and 0.70 (RMSE = 2.06 kcal/mol) on a non-redundant blind test, outperforming existing methods. Our method is freely available as a user-friendly and easy-to-use web server and API at http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/mmcsm_ppi.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carlos H M Rodrigues
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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19
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Al-Jarf R, de Sá AGC, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. pdCSM-cancer: Using Graph-Based Signatures to Identify Small Molecules with Anticancer Properties. J Chem Inf Model 2021; 61:3314-3322. [PMID: 34213323 PMCID: PMC8317153 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.1c00168] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
![]()
The development of
new, effective, and safe drugs to treat cancer
remains a challenging and time-consuming task due to limited hit rates,
restraining subsequent development efforts. Despite the impressive
progress of quantitative structure–activity relationship and
machine learning-based models that have been developed to predict
molecule pharmacodynamics and bioactivity, they have had mixed success
at identifying compounds with anticancer properties against multiple
cell lines. Here, we have developed a novel predictive tool, pdCSM-cancer,
which uses a graph-based signature representation of the chemical
structure of a small molecule in order to accurately predict molecules
likely to be active against one or multiple cancer cell lines. pdCSM-cancer
represents the most comprehensive anticancer bioactivity prediction
platform developed till date, comprising trained and validated models
on experimental data of the growth inhibition concentration (GI50%)
effects, including over 18,000 compounds, on 9 tumor types and 74
distinct cancer cell lines. Across 10-fold cross-validation, it achieved
Pearson’s correlation coefficients of up to 0.74 and comparable
performance of up to 0.67 across independent, non-redundant blind
tests. Leveraging the insights from these cell line-specific models,
we developed a generic predictive model to identify molecules active
in at least 60 cell lines. Our final model achieved an area under
the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of up to 0.94 on
10-fold cross-validation and up to 0.94 on independent non-redundant
blind tests, outperforming alternative approaches. We believe that
our predictive tool will provide a valuable resource to optimizing
and enriching screening libraries for the identification of effective
and safe anticancer molecules. To provide a simple and integrated
platform to rapidly screen for potential biologically active molecules
with favorable anticancer properties, we made pdCSM-cancer freely
available online at http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/pdcsm_cancer.
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Affiliation(s)
- Raghad Al-Jarf
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia
| | - Alex G C de Sá
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia.,Baker Department of Cardiometabolic Health, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Victoria, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia.,School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne 3004, Victoria, Australia.,Baker Department of Cardiometabolic Health, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Victoria, Australia.,Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, 80 Tennis Ct Rd, Cambridge CB2 1GA, United Kingdom
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Portelli S, Barr L, de Sá AG, Pires DE, Ascher DB. Distinguishing between PTEN clinical phenotypes through mutation analysis. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2021; 19:3097-3109. [PMID: 34141133 PMCID: PMC8180946 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2021.05.028] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2021] [Revised: 04/29/2021] [Accepted: 05/19/2021] [Indexed: 12/28/2022] Open
Abstract
Phosphate and tensin homolog on chromosome ten (PTEN) germline mutations are associated with an overarching condition known as PTEN hamartoma tumor syndrome. Clinical phenotypes associated with this syndrome range from macrocephaly and autism spectrum disorder to Cowden syndrome, which manifests as multiple noncancerous tumor-like growths (hamartomas), and an increased predisposition to certain cancers. It is unclear, however, the basis by which mutations might lead to these very diverse phenotypic outcomes. Here we show that, by considering the molecular consequences of mutations in PTEN on protein structure and function, we can accurately distinguish PTEN mutations exhibiting different phenotypes. Changes in phosphatase activity, protein stability, and intramolecular interactions appeared to be major drivers of clinical phenotype, with cancer-associated variants leading to the most drastic changes, while ASD and non-pathogenic variants associated with more mild and neutral changes, respectively. Importantly, we show via saturation mutagenesis that more than half of variants of unknown significance could be associated with disease phenotypes, while over half of Cowden syndrome mutations likely lead to cancer. These insights can assist in exploring potentially important clinical outcomes delineated by PTEN variation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephanie Portelli
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Lucy Barr
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Alex G.C. de Sá
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Baker Department of Cardiometabolic Health, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Douglas E.V. Pires
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - David B. Ascher
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Systems and Computational Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Baker Department of Cardiometabolic Health, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, 80 Tennis Ct Rd, Cambridge CB2 1GA, United States
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21
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Guest JD, Vreven T, Zhou J, Moal I, Jeliazkov JR, Gray JJ, Weng Z, Pierce BG. An expanded benchmark for antibody-antigen docking and affinity prediction reveals insights into antibody recognition determinants. Structure 2021; 29:606-621.e5. [PMID: 33539768 DOI: 10.1016/j.str.2021.01.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 51] [Impact Index Per Article: 17.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/08/2020] [Revised: 11/15/2020] [Accepted: 01/11/2021] [Indexed: 01/04/2023]
Abstract
Accurate predictive modeling of antibody-antigen complex structures and structure-based antibody design remain major challenges in computational biology, with implications for biotherapeutics, immunity, and vaccines. Through a systematic search for high-resolution structures of antibody-antigen complexes and unbound antibody and antigen structures, in conjunction with identification of experimentally determined binding affinities, we have assembled a non-redundant set of test cases for antibody-antigen docking and affinity prediction. This benchmark more than doubles the number of antibody-antigen complexes and corresponding affinities available in our previous benchmarks, providing an unprecedented view of the determinants of antibody recognition and insights into molecular flexibility. Initial assessments of docking and affinity prediction tools highlight the challenges posed by this diverse set of cases, which includes camelid nanobodies, therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, and broadly neutralizing antibodies targeting viral glycoproteins. This dataset will enable development of advanced predictive modeling and design methods for this therapeutically relevant class of protein-protein interactions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Johnathan D Guest
- University of Maryland Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research, Rockville, MD 20850, USA; Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
| | - Thom Vreven
- Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA
| | - Jing Zhou
- Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
| | - Iain Moal
- Computational Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline Research and Development, Stevenage SG1 2NY, UK
| | - Jeliazko R Jeliazkov
- Program in Molecular Biophysics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
| | - Jeffrey J Gray
- Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA; Program in Molecular Biophysics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
| | - Zhiping Weng
- Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA.
| | - Brian G Pierce
- University of Maryland Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research, Rockville, MD 20850, USA; Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
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22
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Predicting antibody affinity changes upon mutations by combining multiple predictors. Sci Rep 2020; 10:19533. [PMID: 33177627 PMCID: PMC7658247 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-76369-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/26/2020] [Accepted: 10/19/2020] [Indexed: 02/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Antibodies are proteins working in our immune system with high affinity and specificity for target antigens, making them excellent tools for both biotherapeutic and bioengineering applications. The prediction of antibody affinity changes upon mutations (\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$${{\Delta \Delta {\mathrm{G}}}}_{\mathrm{binding}}$$\end{document}ΔΔGbinding) is important for antibody engineering. Numerous computational methods have been proposed based on different approaches including molecular mechanics and machine learning. However, the accuracy by each individual predictor is not enough for efficient antibody development. In this study, we develop a new prediction method by combining multiple predictors based on machine learning. Our method was tested on the SiPMAB database, evaluating the Pearson’s correlation coefficient between predicted and experimental \documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$${{\Delta \Delta {\mathrm{G}}}}_{\mathrm{binding}}$$\end{document}ΔΔGbinding. Our method achieved higher accuracy (R = 0.69) than previous molecular mechanics or machine-learning based methods (R = 0.59) and the previous method using the average of multiple predictors (R = 0.64). Feature importance analysis indicated that the improved accuracy was obtained by combining predictors with different importance, which have different protocols for calculating energies and for generating mutant and unbound state structures. This study demonstrates that machine learning is a powerful framework for combining different approaches to predict antibody affinity changes.
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23
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Pires DEV, Rodrigues CHM, Ascher DB. mCSM-membrane: predicting the effects of mutations on transmembrane proteins. Nucleic Acids Res 2020; 48:W147-W153. [PMID: 32469063 PMCID: PMC7319563 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkaa416] [Citation(s) in RCA: 62] [Impact Index Per Article: 15.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2020] [Revised: 05/04/2020] [Accepted: 05/28/2020] [Indexed: 12/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Significant efforts have been invested into understanding and predicting the molecular consequences of mutations in protein coding regions, however nearly all approaches have been developed using globular, soluble proteins. These methods have been shown to poorly translate to studying the effects of mutations in membrane proteins. To fill this gap, here we report, mCSM-membrane, a user-friendly web server that can be used to analyse the impacts of mutations on membrane protein stability and the likelihood of them being disease associated. mCSM-membrane derives from our well-established mutation modelling approach that uses graph-based signatures to model protein geometry and physicochemical properties for supervised learning. Our stability predictor achieved correlations of up to 0.72 and 0.67 (on cross validation and blind tests, respectively), while our pathogenicity predictor achieved a Matthew's Correlation Coefficient (MCC) of up to 0.77 and 0.73, outperforming previously described methods in both predicting changes in stability and in identifying pathogenic variants. mCSM-membrane will be an invaluable and dedicated resource for investigating the effects of single-point mutations on membrane proteins through a freely available, user friendly web server at http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/mcsm_membrane.
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Affiliation(s)
- Douglas E V Pires
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Institute, Melbourne, Victoria 3004, Australia.,Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3052, Australia.,School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3052, Australia
| | - Carlos H M Rodrigues
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Institute, Melbourne, Victoria 3004, Australia.,Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3052, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Institute, Melbourne, Victoria 3004, Australia.,Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3052, Australia.,Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 1GA, UK
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24
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Rodrigues CHM, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. DynaMut2: Assessing changes in stability and flexibility upon single and multiple point missense mutations. Protein Sci 2020; 30:60-69. [PMID: 32881105 PMCID: PMC7737773 DOI: 10.1002/pro.3942] [Citation(s) in RCA: 207] [Impact Index Per Article: 51.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2020] [Revised: 08/27/2020] [Accepted: 08/28/2020] [Indexed: 12/11/2022]
Abstract
Predicting the effect of missense variations on protein stability and dynamics is important for understanding their role in diseases, and the link between protein structure and function. Approaches to estimate these changes have been proposed, but most only consider single‐point missense variants and a static state of the protein, with those that incorporate dynamics are computationally expensive. Here we present DynaMut2, a web server that combines Normal Mode Analysis (NMA) methods to capture protein motion and our graph‐based signatures to represent the wildtype environment to investigate the effects of single and multiple point mutations on protein stability and dynamics. DynaMut2 was able to accurately predict the effects of missense mutations on protein stability, achieving Pearson's correlation of up to 0.72 (RMSE: 1.02 kcal/mol) on a single point and 0.64 (RMSE: 1.80 kcal/mol) on multiple‐point missense mutations across 10‐fold cross‐validation and independent blind tests. For single‐point mutations, DynaMut2 achieved comparable performance with other methods when predicting variations in Gibbs Free Energy (ΔΔG) and in melting temperature (ΔTm). We anticipate our tool to be a valuable suite for the study of protein flexibility analysis and the study of the role of variants in disease. DynaMut2 is freely available as a web server and API at http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/dynamut2.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carlos H M Rodrigues
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.,School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.,Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.,Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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25
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Abstract
Mutations in protein-coding regions can lead to large biological changes and are associated with genetic conditions, including cancers and Mendelian diseases, as well as drug resistance. Although whole genome and exome sequencing help to elucidate potential genotype-phenotype correlations, there is a large gap between the identification of new variants and deciphering their molecular consequences. A comprehensive understanding of these mechanistic consequences is crucial to better understand and treat diseases in a more personalized and effective way. This is particularly relevant considering estimates that over 80% of mutations associated with a disease are incorrectly assumed to be causative. A thorough analysis of potential effects of mutations is required to correctly identify the molecular mechanisms of disease and enable the distinction between disease-causing and non-disease-causing variation within a gene. Here we present an overview of our integrative mutation analysis platform, which focuses on refining the current genotype-phenotype correlation methods by using the wealth of protein structural information.
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26
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Pires DEV, Ascher DB. mycoCSM: Using Graph-Based Signatures to Identify Safe Potent Hits against Mycobacteria. J Chem Inf Model 2020; 60:3450-3456. [PMID: 32615035 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.0c00362] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/16/2022]
Abstract
Development of new potent, safe drugs to treat Mycobacteria has proven to be challenging, with limited hit rates of initial screens restricting subsequent development efforts. Despite significant efforts and the evolution of quantitative structure-activity relationship as well as machine learning-based models for computationally predicting molecule bioactivity, there is an unmet need for efficient and reliable methods for identifying biologically active compounds against Mycobacterium that are also safe for humans. Here we developed mycoCSM, a graph-based signature approach to rapidly identify compounds likely to be active against bacteria from the genus Mycobacterium, or against specific Mycobacteria species. mycoCSM was trained and validated on eight organism-specific and for the first time a general Mycobacteria data set, achieving correlation coefficients of up to 0.89 on cross-validation and 0.88 on independent blind tests, when predicting bioactivity in terms of minimum inhibitory concentration. In addition, we also developed a predictor to identify those compounds likely to penetrate in necrotic tuberculosis foci, which achieved a correlation coefficient of 0.75. Together with a built-in estimator of the maximum tolerated dose in humans, we believe this method will provide a valuable resource to enrich screening libraries with potent, safe molecules. To provide simple guidance in the selection of libraries with favorable anti-Mycobacteria properties, we made mycoCSM freely available online at http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/myco_csm.
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Affiliation(s)
- Douglas E V Pires
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, 75 Commercial Road, Melbourne 3004, VIC, Australia.,Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, 30 Flemington Rd, Parkville 3052, VIC, Australia.,School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, VIC, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, 75 Commercial Road, Melbourne 3004, VIC, Australia.,Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, 30 Flemington Rd, Parkville 3052, VIC, Australia.,Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, 80 Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1GA, England
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27
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Myung Y, Pires DEV, Ascher DB. mmCSM-AB: guiding rational antibody engineering through multiple point mutations. Nucleic Acids Res 2020; 48:W125-W131. [PMID: 32432715 PMCID: PMC7319589 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkaa389] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2020] [Revised: 04/18/2020] [Accepted: 05/16/2020] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
While antibodies are becoming an increasingly important therapeutic class, especially in personalized medicine, their development and optimization has been largely through experimental exploration. While there have been many efforts to develop computational tools to guide rational antibody engineering, most approaches are of limited accuracy when applied to antibody design, and have largely been limited to analysing a single point mutation at a time. To overcome this gap, we have curated a dataset of 242 experimentally determined changes in binding affinity upon multiple point mutations in antibody-target complexes (89 increasing and 153 decreasing binding affinity). Here, we have shown that by using our graph-based signatures and atomic interaction information, we can accurately analyse the consequence of multi-point mutations on antigen binding affinity. Our approach outperformed other available tools across cross-validation and two independent blind tests, achieving Pearson's correlations of up to 0.95. We have implemented our new approach, mmCSM-AB, as a web-server that can help guide the process of affinity maturation in antibody design. mmCSM-AB is freely available at http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/mmcsm_ab/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yoochan Myung
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Institute, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3052, Australia
| | - Douglas E V Pires
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Institute, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3052, Australia
- School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3052, Australia
| | - David B Ascher
- Computational Biology and Clinical Informatics, Baker Institute, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia
- Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3052, Australia
- Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1GA, UK
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