Publications

Target‐guided synthesis (TGS) has emerged as a promising strategy in drug discovery. While reported examples of TGS generally involve two‐component reactions, there is a strong case for developing target‐guided versions of three‐component reactions (3CRs) because of their potential to deliver highly diversified, druglike molecules. To this end, the Groebke‐Blackburn‐Bienaymé reaction was selected as model 3CR. We recently reported a series of ...

Spectrophores are novel descriptors that are calculated from the three-dimensional atomic properties of molecules. In our current implementation, the atomic properties that were used to calculate spectrophores include atomic partial charges, atomic lipophilicity indices, atomic shape deviations and atomic softness properties. This approach can easily be widened to also include additional atomic properties. Our novel methodology finds its roots ...

Substrate activity screening (SAS) was presented a decade ago by Ellman and co-workers as a straightforward methodology for the identification of fragment-sized building blocks for enzyme inhibitors. Ever since, SAS and variations derived from it have been successfully applied to the discovery of inhibitors of various families of enzymatically active drug targets. This review covers key achievements and challenges of SAS and related ...

KLK4 is a serine protease from the kallikrein family that is involved in cancer progression. The diphenyl phosphonate warhead is intended to bind irreversibly with serine proteases, but unexpectedly, very potent KLK4 diphenyl phosphonate inhibitors were discovered with reversible inhibition kinetics.

Urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) is a biomarker and therapeutic target for several cancer types. Its inhibition is regarded as a promising, noncytotoxic approach in cancer therapy by blocking growth and/or metastasis of solid tumors. Earlier, we reported the modified substrate activity screening (MSAS) approach and applied it for the identification of fragments with affinity for uPA's Si pocket. Here, these fragments are transformed into a ...

Fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) has evolved into an established approach for hit identification. Typically, most applications of FBDD depend on specialised cost- and time-intensive biophysical techniques. The substrate activity screening (SAS) approach has been proposed as a relatively cheap and straightforward alternative for identification of fragments for enzyme inhibitors. We have investigated SAS for the discovery of inhibitors of ...