hydrophobic functionalization

Owing to the high conservation of orthosteric sites, conventional orthosteric drugs frequently suffer from poor subtype selectivity, off-target toxicity, and drug resistance, severely restricting their clinical application. In contrast, allosteric sites feature low conservation, high hydrophobicity, weak polarity, confined spatial geometry, and dynamic cryptic properties. These characteristics endow allosteric modulators with distinct advantages including high selectivity, functional tunability, and improved safety, making allosteric therapy a key direction in modern drug discovery.

MCE has curated nearly 1,000 structurally disclosed clinical-stage allosteric modulators. By analyzing allosteric protein–ligand complex structures from the PDB database, we extracted core pharmacophores and privileged scaffolds. Adopting a rational design strategy of “scaffold derivation + allosteric physicochemical filtering”, we performed secondary screening on the derived compounds strictly following the optimal physicochemical principles for allosteric binding based on universal allosteric pocket properties: molecular weight 300–500 Da, HBD ≤ 3, HBA = 3–8, PSA = 70–120 Ų, rotatable bonds ≤ 6, highly rigid scaffolds, cLogP = 1.0–3.8, and no strongly ionizable groups. The selected compounds exhibit high rigidity and shape complementarity, making them well-suited for targeting shallow, dynamic, and hydrophobic-dominated allosteric pockets.

This allosteric modulator library contains 4,315 structurally diverse, lead-like compounds dedicated to allosteric drug development, allosteric site targeting, and allosteric modulator screening. It is suitable for kinases, GPCRs, and other important drug targets. All compounds are analogs of clinical-stage allosteric modulators with a similarity score > 0.6, combining excellent druggability and allosteric binding potential. It provides a highly efficient tool for early-stage allosteric drug discovery.

Ionizable lipids are a class of specialized, functional lipid molecules with pH-sensitive charge characteristics. They are primarily divided into two major categories: ionizable cationic lipids and ionizable anionic lipids, though the term typically specifies ionizable cationic lipids within the biomedical field. Structurally, these lipids consist of an ionizable hydrophilic headgroup, a biodegradable linker, and hydrophobic tails. Their primary application is serving as the key delivery vehicle in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to encapsulate negatively charged nucleic acid macromolecules, such as mRNA vaccines, siRNA therapeutics, and CRISPR gene-editing components. In a physiological, neutral environment, they remain electrically neutral to minimize systemic toxicity and prolong circulation time. Upon entering the acidic microenvironment of cellular endosomes, however, they undergo protonation to become positively charged, thereby inducing membrane fusion and enabling the highly efficient intracellular release of the nucleic acid cargo. Consequently, they serve as the technological cornerstone for bringing nucleic acid therapies into clinical application.

To accelerate the translational process of cutting-edge nucleic acid drugs, MCE has meticulously constructed an ionizable lipid compound library containing 95 high-performance molecules, aiming to provide researchers and pharmaceutical professionals with a high-throughput, multi-dimensional lipid screening platform.

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are membrane proteins in humans and one of the most important targets in drug discovery. Approximately 35% of launched drugs are targeted GPCRs, making them a crucial class of targets in drug discovery.

The orthosteric site of a GPCR is its endogenous ligand’s (such as neurotransmitters or hormones) binding site. This site plays a central role in signal transduction. Small molecules binding to this site typically contain a protonatable amino group, enabling the formation of salt bridges or hydrogen bonds with acidic residues in the binding pocket. In contrast, the allosteric site does not directly initiate signaling but modulates the signal intensity of the GPCR by altering or stabilizing the conformation of the orthosteric site. Small molecules binding to the allosteric site often contain multiple aromatic rings to occupy hydrophobic pockets and achieve their functional effects.

MCE has collected over 7,113 reported bioactive molecules targeting GPCRs, covering Class A, B, and C GPCRs. These small molecules were subjected to AI representation to extract 2D and 3D features. Subsequently, we do screening by AI score based on similarity to identify molecules in diversity library highly similar to the reported bioactive molecules in both 2D and 3D, with a threshold greater than 0.7. Further screening based on cLogP was applied to select molecules with good lipophilicity, which facilitates the binding of small molecules to GPCRs. This diversity library can be widely applied to the discovery of compounds targeting GPCR proteins.

Recently, significant advancements in tyrosine-targeting electrophiles have primarily occurred in the field of protein-protein interactions (PPIs), where cysteine residues are often underrepresented and novel chemistries are needed to address these interfaces. In this context, tyrosines are frequently more accessible compared to more buried binding sites. Moreover, they are commonly found at "hot spots," which are functional epitopes of PPIs, with 12.3% of the residues consisting of tyrosines. This prevalence is likely due to the hydrophobic nature of tyrosine, its ability to participate in aromatic π-interactions, and its capacity for hydrogen bonding. Beyond PPIs, some progress has also been made in covalent tyrosine targeting in other areas where more commonly addressed side chains are lacking. Even though tyrosine has a slightly lower pKa value compared to the protonated lysine side chain (approximately 10 vs. 10.5 for the unprotected amino acid side chains), significantly less progress has been made in the development of tyrosine-targeted covalent ligands compared to lysine. This is likely due to the reduced flexibility of the tyrosine side chain and the greater steric hindrance of its hydroxy group, which makes it more challenging to adopt suitable reaction geometries.

Through careful selection, we constructed a structural filter containing over 110 electrophilic groups. By analyzing the electrophilic fragments selected by the structural filter, we removed any molecules with trivial or undesirable structural features. Ultimately, we obtained 124 fragment molecules which can target tyrosine residue and can be used for fragment-based covalent drug discovery.