Publications

Cell-permeable small molecules that inhibit their targets on fast timescales are powerful probes of cell-division mechanisms. Such inhibitors have been identified using phenotype-based screens with chemical libraries. However, the characteristics of compound libraries needed to effectively span cell-division phenotype space, to find probes that target different mechanisms, are not known. Here we show that a […]

As an unbiased functional screen to identify agents activating dendritic cells (DCs), we recently developed a DC-based biosensor system, in which a stable murine DC line XS106 was engineered to express the yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) gene under the control of the IL-1beta promoter. Here we report that nystatin (NYT), an antifungal drug of the […]

The data for 3.8 million compounds from structural databases of 32 providers were gathered and stored in a single chemical database. Duplicates are removed using the IUPAC International Chemical Identifier. After this, 2.6 million compounds remain. Each database and the final one were studied in term of uniqueness, diversity, frameworks, ‘drug-like’ and ‘lead-like’ properties. This […]

Ketoconazole (KTZ) and other azole antifungal agents are known to have a variety of actions beyond the inhibition of sterol synthesis in fungi. These drugs share structural features with a series of novel heme oxygenase (HO) inhibitors designed in our laboratory. Accordingly, we hypothesized that therapeutically used azole-based antifungal drugs are effective HO inhibitors. Using […]

High-throughput screening (HTS) of chemical compounds to identify modulators of molecular targets is a mainstay of pharmaceutical development. Increasingly, HTS is being used to identify chemical probes of gene, pathway, and cell functions, with the ultimate goal of comprehensively delineating relationships between chemical structures and biological activities. Achieving this goal will require methodologies that efficiently […]

Familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) accounts for 10% of all ALS cases; approximately 25% of these cases are due to mutations in the Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase gene (SOD1). To date, 105 different mutations spanning all 5 exons have been identified in the SOD1 gene. Mutant SOD1-associated ALS is caused by a toxic gain of function […]

In order to develop a fluorescence polarization (FP) assay for calcium binding proteins, a fluorescent peptides based library of 1328 compounds has been synthesized. The use of this library has been validated by setting up a FP-high-throughput screening (FP-HTS) assay for calmodulin using the synthetic gene product (synCaM). With this assay, a set of 880 […]

Advances in genetics, proteomics and cell biology over the past 20 years have unearthed a multitude of potential macromolecular targets for the selective treatment of disease. The challenge remains to find appropriate small molecule ligands for these proteins (or nucleic acids), and to use these ligands to validate novel disease targets. The advent of low-cost […]

Bacterial secondary metabolites display diverse biological activities, thus having potential as pharmacological agents. Although most of these compounds are discovered by random screening, it is possible to predict and re-design their structures based on the information on their biosynthetic pathways. Biosynthesis of macrolides, governed by modular polyketide synthases (PKS), obeys certain rules, which can be […]