Screening of a chemical library by HT-G4-FID for discovery of selective G-quadruplex binders

Curr Pharm Des. 2012;18(14):1992-2001. doi: 10.2174/138161212799958350.

Abstract

Due to the lack of structural guidelines about G-quadruplex ligands, rational design cannot be the only approach to discover potent G4-ligands. As a complementary approach, screening of chemical library may provide interesting scaffolds known as hits provided that specific tools are available. In this work, the Institut Curie-CNRS chemical library was firstly screened by chemoinformatics methods. Similarity estimations by comparison with reference compounds (Phen-DC3, 360A, MMQ12) provided a set of molecules, which were then evaluated by high-throughput G4-FID (HT-G4-FID) against various G-quadruplex DNA. A full investigation of the most interesting molecules, using the HT-G4-FID assay and molecular modeling, supplied an interesting structure-activity relationship confirming the efficiency of this general approach. Overall, we demonstrated that HT-G4-FID coupled with screening of chemical libraries is a powerful tool to identify new G4-DNA binding scaffolds.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • DNA / chemistry*
  • Drug Discovery*
  • G-Quadruplexes*
  • High-Throughput Screening Assays / methods*
  • Intercalating Agents / chemistry*
  • Ligands
  • Small Molecule Libraries / analysis*
  • Small Molecule Libraries / chemistry
  • Structure-Activity Relationship

Substances

  • Intercalating Agents
  • Ligands
  • Small Molecule Libraries
  • DNA