On April 13, 2012, Informa’s Scrip Insights the publication of a new book-length report, Advances in the Discovery of Protein-Protein Interaction Modulators, by Allan B. Haberman, Ph.D.
Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are of central importance in biochemical pathways, including pathways involved in disease processes. However, PPIs have been considered the prototypical “undruggable” or “challenging” targets. The discovery of small-molecule drugs that can serve as antagonists or agonists of PPIs, and which are capable of being successfully taken into human clinical trials, has been extremely difficult. Among the theoretical reasons for this is that contact surfaces involved in PPIs are usually large and flat, and lack the types of cavities present in the surfaces of proteins that bind to small-molecule ligands.
Nevertheless, over the last twenty years, researchers have developed a set of technologies and strategies that have enabled them, in a several cases, to discover developable small-molecule PPI modulators. One direct PPI agonist, the thrombopoietin mimetic eltrombopag (Ligand/GlaxoSmithKline’s Promacta/Revolade), has reached the market. The chemical structure of this compound is illustrated in the figure above. Several other small-molecule PPI modulators are in clinical trials. Despite this progress, the discovery and development of small-molecule PPI modulators has been one-at-a-time, slow and laborious.
The new strategic importance of protein-protein interactions as drug targets
Meanwhile, PPIs as potential drug targets have acquired a key strategic importance for the success of the pharmaceutical industry. Over at least the last decade, pharmaceutical R&D has failed to develop enough high-valued new drugs to make up for or exceed revenues from blockbusters that are losing patent protection. As we have discussed in previous publications and in , this low productivity is mainly due to pipeline attrition. There are several factors (ranging from target selection through drug design, preclinical studies, identification and use of biomarkers, and design of clinical trials) that can influence pipeline attrition.
However, increasing numbers of industry leaders and analysts identify target selection as the key factor that is limiting the productivity of pharmaceutical R&D. For example, I served as a workshop leader at Hanson Wade’s last summer, which took that point of view. There are at least several such conferences throughout the year, which are organized at the request of industry leaders.
Industry experts who identify poor target selection as a major cause of pharma R&D’s productivity woes conclude that the main issue is that companies are running out of “druggable” targets that have not already been addressed by marketed drugs. As of 2011, only 2% of human proteins have been targeted with drugs. Most of the remaining disease-relevant proteins, including transcription factors and many other types of signaling proteins, work via interacting with other proteins in PPIs. Therefore, in order to reverse its R&D slump, the pharmaceutical industry needs to develop technologies and strategies to address PPIs and other hitherto “undruggable” targets.
Contents of the report
Our report discusses technologies and strategies that enable the discovery of drugs targeting PPIs, including both small-molecule and synthetic peptidic modulators. It includes case studies on the discovery of compounds that address specific target classes, with emphasis on agents that have reached human clinical studies. This includes addressing the issue of the need to produce PPI modulatory agents that have pharmacological properties that will enable them to be good clinical candidates.
The report also includes discussions of second-generation technologies for the discovery of small-molecule and peptidic PPI modulators, which have been developed by such companies as Forma, Ensemble, and Aileron, and by academic laboratories. The field of PPI modulator discovery has represented a “premature technology”, i.e., a field of biomedical science in which consistent practicable therapeutic applications are in the indefinite future, due to difficult technological hurdles. We have discussed premature technologies on earlier on this blog. The second-generation technologies are designed to overcome the hurdles and to thus enable a more accelerated and systematic approach to PPI drug discovery and development.
In part as the result of the development of these technologies, and of the increasing strategic importance of PPI modulator development, companies have been moving into the field. Examples include Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Novartis, and Roche. A key issue is to what extent the new technologies for PPI modulator R&D will enable this area to be commercially successful, and to meet the strategic needs of the industry for expanding the universe of targets for which drugs can be developed.
To see the report Advances in the Discovery of Protein-Protein Interaction Modulators, please click here.
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