Software automation tools for increased throughput metabolic soft-spot identification in early drug discovery

The ability to supplement high-throughput metabolic clearance data with structural information defining the site of metabolism should allow design teams to streamline their synthetic decisions. However, broad application of metabolite identification in early drug discovery has been limited, largely due to the time required for data review and structural assignment. The advent of mass defect filtering and its application toward metabolite scouting paved the way for the development of software automation tools capable of rapidly identifying drug-related material in complex biological matrices. Two semi-automated commercial software applications, MetabolitePilot™ and Mass-MetaSite™, were evaluated to assess the relative speed and accuracy of structural assignments using data generated on a high-resolution MS platform.

Review of these applications has demonstrated their utility in providing accurate results in a time-efficient manner, leading to acceleration of metabolite identification initiatives while highlighting the continued need for biotransformation expertise in the interpretation of more complex metabolic reactions.