Development of an informatics platform for therapeutic protein and peptide analytics.

The momentum gained by research on biologics has not been met yet with equal thrust on the informatics side. There is a noticeable lack of software for data management that empowers the bench scientists working on the development of biologic therapeutics. SARvision|Biologics is a tool to analyze data associated with biopolymers, including peptides, antibodies, and protein therapeutics programs. The program brings under a single user interface tools to filter, mine, and visualize data as well as those algorithms needed to organize sequences. As part of the data-analysis tools, we introduce two new concepts: mutation cliffs and invariant maps. Invariant maps show the variability of properties when a monomer is maintained constant in a position of the biopolymer. Mutation cliff maps draw attention to pairs of sequences where a single or limited number of point mutations elicit a large change in a property of interest. We illustrate the program and its applications using a peptide data set collected from the literature.

Fragment-based drug design.

Fragment-based drug design (FBDD), which is comprised of both fragment screening and the use of fragment hits to design leads, began more than 15 years ago and has been steadily gaining in popularity and utility. Its origin lies on the fact that the coverage of chemical space and the binding efficiency of hits are directly related to the size of the compounds screened. Nevertheless, FBDD still faces challenges, among them developing fragment screening libraries that ensure optimal coverage of chemical space, physical properties and chemical tractability. Fragment screening also requires sensitive assays, often biophysical in nature, to detect weak binders. In this chapter we will introduce the technologies used to address these challenges and outline the experimental advantages that make FBDD one of the most popular new hit-to-lead process.