Our latest fragment-based drug discovery paper against the p97 ATPase has been noticed and reviewed favorably by the widely-read Practical Fragments blog.
Here is an excerpt from that review:
“The protein p97 is important in regulating protein homeostasis, and thus a potential anti-cancer target. But this is no low-hanging fruit: the protein has three domains and assembles into a hexamer. Two domains, D1 and D2, are ATPases. The third (N) domain binds to other proteins in the cell. All the domains are dynamic and interdependent. Oh, and crystallography is tough. Previous efforts have identified inhibitors of the D2 domain, but not the others. Not to be put off by difficult challenges, a group of researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) led by Michelle Arkin and Mark Kelly have performed fragment screening against the D1 and N domains, and report their adventures in J. Biomol. Screen.