ProPose:  Steered Virtual Screening by Simultaneous Protein−Ligand Docking and Ligand−Ligand Alignment

The 'model-free' screening engine ProPose implements a general method for performing simultaneous protein-ligand docking, ligand-ligand alignment, pharmacophore queries-and combinations thereof-in order to incorporate a priori information into screening protocols. In this manuscript we describe a case study on herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase, an important antiviral drug target, where we evaluate different approaches for handling a specific type of a priori information, i.e., multiple target structures. We demonstrate that a simultaneous alignment on two target structures--in conjunction with logic operations on interactions and docking constraints derived from protein structure--is an effective means of (i) improving the enrichment of chemical substructures that are compatible with the a priori known ligands, (ii) ensuring the steric fit into the target protein, and (iii) handling target flexibility. The combination of ligand- and receptor-based methods steers the virtual screening by ranking molecules according to the similarity of their interaction pattern with known ligands, thereby--to some extent--outweighing the deficiencies of simple scoring functions often used in initial virtual screening.