Virtual screening capability for under $5K?

Many early stage companies may be missing out on the value that docking can provide at the validated hit and hit-to-lead stages of development, where structure/activity relationships (SAR) can help guide chemistry development of lead compounds.

While docking large HTS libraries with millions of compounds may require specialized CPU clusters, docking of small libraries (i.e., thousands of compounds) and SAR compounds from experimental assays is readily achievable in short time frames with a relatively inexpensive Intel Xeon workstation.

Following an initial investment in the workstation and software, follow-on costs are minimal (e.g., electricity, IT support and data backup). Turnaround times may be faster than with CRO services.  Also, sensitive IP data is also protected by being retained onsite and not transmitted over the internet.

Equipment / cost breakdown:

Software:

AutoDock Vina (non-restrictive commercial license)       cost: free

Accurate (benchmarked against 6 other commercial docking programs)

Compatible with AutoDock tools

Optimized for speed (orders of magnitude faster than previous generation)

Parallelized code for multi-core systems

AutoDock Tools (non-restrictive commercial license)      cost: free

PyMol Incentive (commercial license)                                        cost ~$90 / mo

Visualize docking results, free plugin can allow Vina to be run within PyMol GUI

Fedora Linux                                                                                              cost: free

Hardware:

HP Z620 Workstation (stock configuration)                          cost: $2999

2 GHz (6 Core) Intel Xeon E5-2620 2GHz

USB keyboard and mouse                                                                  cost: $50

Dell Ultrasharp 27” LED monitor                                                  cost: $649

1TB USB HD for data backup                                                          cost: $150

IT support for initial setup ~ 4 hours                                           cost: $400

Total initial capital expenditure:                                                  ~$4350