Fragment-based drug discovery applied to Hsp90. Discovery of two lead series with high ligand efficiency.

Inhibitors of the chaperone Hsp90 are potentially useful as chemotherapeutic agents in cancer. This paper describes an application of fragment screening to Hsp90 using a combination of NMR and high throughput X-ray crystallography. The screening identified an aminopyrimidine with affinity in the high micromolar range and subsequent structure-based design allowed its optimization into a low nanomolar series with good ligand efficiency. A phenolic chemotype was also identified in fragment screening and was found to bind with affinity close to 1 mM. This fragment was optimized using structure based design into a resorcinol lead which has subnanomolar affinity for Hsp90, excellent cell potency, and good ligand efficiency. This fragment to lead campaign improved affinity for Hsp90 by over 1,000,000-fold with the addition of only six heavy atoms. The companion paper (DOI: 10.1021/jm100060b) describes how the resorcinol lead was optimized into a compound that is now in clinical trials for the treatment of cancer.

Discovery of (2,4-dihydroxy-5-isopropylphenyl)-[5-(4-methylpiperazin-1-ylmethyl)-1,3-dihydroisoindol-2-yl]methanone (AT13387), a novel inhibitor of the molecular chaperone Hsp90 by fragment based drug design.

Inhibitors of the molecular chaperone heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) are currently generating significant interest in clinical development as potential treatments for cancer. In a preceding publication (DOI: 10.1021/jm100059d ) we describe Astex's approach to screening fragments against Hsp90 and the subsequent optimization of two hits into leads with inhibitory activities in the low nanomolar range. This paper describes the structure guided optimization of the 2,4-dihydroxybenzamide lead molecule 1 and details some of the drug discovery strategies employed in the identification of AT13387 (35), which has progressed through preclinical development and is currently being tested in man.

Preparation of kinase-biased compounds in the search for lead inhibitors of kinase targets.

This work describes the preparation of approximately 13,000 compounds for rapid identification of hits in high-throughput screening (HTS). These compounds were designed as potential serine/threonine or tyrosine kinase inhibitors. The library consists of various scaffolds, e.g., purines, oxindoles, and imidazoles, whereby each core scaffold generally includes the hydrogen bond acceptor/donor properties known to be important for kinase binding. Several of these are based upon literature kinase templates, or adaptations of them to provide novelty. The routes to their preparation are outlined. A variety of automation techniques were used to prepare >500 compounds per scaffold. Where applicable, scavenger resins were employed to remove excess reagents and when necessary, preparative high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used for purification. These compounds were screened against an 'in-house' kinase panel. The success rate in HTS was significantly higher than the corporate compound collection.