DNA-templated combinatorial assembly of small molecule fragments amenable to selection/amplification cycles

The discovery of small molecule probes which selectively modulate biological pathways is a cornerstone in the development of new therapeutics. Progress in our ability to access libraries of biologically relevant small molecules in conjunction with streamlined screening technologies have also enabled a more systematic approach to chemical biology. Nevertheless, the current state of the art still requires a large infrastructure and only a small fraction of the proteome has been addressed thus far. The emergence of technologies based on nucleic acid encoding of small molecules presents a new screening paradigm. We describe a method based on DNA-templated combinatorial display of PNA-encoded drug fragments affording 62 500 combinations which can be amplified following a selection. This concept was demonstrated with a screen against a representative target, carbonic anhydrase, by iterative cycles of affinity selection, amplification of DNA template and “translation” back into selected library members. The results show a clear convergence towards combinations which, upon resynthesis as covalent adducts, proved to bind cooperatively to carbonic anhydrase.