DruGUI 2.0: mapping protein druggability with probe-based molecular dynamics

We introduce DruGUI 2.0, a drug discovery tool for assessing the druggability of proteins, integrated into the ProDy application programming interface (API). DruGUI 2.0 is developed to facilitate the search for druggable sites while allowing for proteins' conformational flexibility. Simulations in explicit solvent, with an option to include membrane, are carried out in the presence of probe molecules selected from an expanded library of small molecules containing drug-like fragments. Druggable sites beyond orthosteric sites are identifiable, as well as the probes that show high affinity to bind to those sites. Characterization of the composition and position of the probes helps build pharmacophore models and estimate relative binding affinities. As a Python module with enhanced visualization features, DruGUI 2.0 complements, and benefits from, the vast collection of protein sequence, structure, and dynamics analyses modules accessible in ProDy. Case studies in the Supplemental Material showcase the utility of DruGUI 2.0 applied to both soluble targets and membrane proteins.

ProDy is open-sourced and freely available under MIT License from https://github.com/prody/ProDy. The code version of DruGUI 2.0 used for simulations is available on Zenodo : 10.5281/zenodo.20511357.