2. Academic Validation
  3. Virtual Screening Directly Identifies New Fragment-Sized Inhibitors of Carboxylesterase Notum with Nanomolar Activity

Virtual Screening Directly Identifies New Fragment-Sized Inhibitors of Carboxylesterase Notum with Nanomolar Activity

  • J Med Chem. 2022 Jan 13;65(1):562-578. doi: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.1c01735.
David Steadman 1,  Benjamin N Atkinson 1,  Yuguang Zhao 2,  Nicky J Willis 1,  Sarah Frew 1,  Amy Monaghan 1,  Chandni Patel 1,  Emma Armstrong 1,  Kathryn Costelloe 1,  Lorenza Magno 1,  Magda Bictash 1,  E Yvonne Jones 2,  Paul V Fish 1,  Fredrik Svensson 1
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Alzheimer's Research UK UCL Drug Discovery Institute, University College London, The Cruciform Building, Gower Street, LondonWC1E 6BT, U.K.
  • 2 Division of Structural Biology, Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, The Henry Wellcome Building for Genomic Medicine, Roosevelt Drive, OxfordOX3 7BN, U.K.
PMID: 34939789 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.1c01735
Abstract

Notum is a negative regulator of Wnt signaling acting through the hydrolysis of a palmitoleoylate ester, which is required for Wnt activity. Inhibitors of Notum could be of use in diseases where dysfunctional Notum activity is an underlying cause. A docking-based virtual screen (VS) of a large commercial library was used to shortlist 952 compounds for experimental validation as inhibitors of Notum. The VS was successful with 31 compounds having an IC50 < 500 nM. A critical selection process was then applied with two clusters and two singletons (1-4d) selected for hit validation. Optimization of 4d guided by structural biology identified potent inhibitors of Notum activity that restored Wnt/β-catenin signaling in cell-based models. The [1,2,4]triazolo[4,3-b]pyradizin-3(2H)-one series 4 represent a new chemical class of Notum inhibitors and the first to be discovered by a VS campaign. These results demonstrate the value of VS with well-designed docking models based on X-ray structures.

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