I03-Macromolecular Crystallography
I04-1-Macromolecular Crystallography (fixed wavelength)
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Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[30602]
Open Access
Abstract: Fragment-based drug design offers multiple routes to advance from fragments. One approach is to build structure-activity relationships (SAR) from analogue series in direct-to-biology workflows. Analogues can be prepared by automated chemistry and tested as crude reaction mixtures (CRMs) without purification, but assay noise often leads to hit resynthesis, potentially discarding false negatives and reducing SAR dataset size. High-throughput (HT) X-ray crystallography has the potential to address these issues by resolving hits directly from 100s–1000s of CRMs. However, no systematic analytics exist for extracting SAR models from HT crystallographic evaluation of CRMs. Here, we demonstrate that crystallographic SAR (xSAR) can be extracted from CRMs evaluated via HT X-ray crystallography. We developed a simple rule-based ligand scoring scheme that identifies conserved chemical features associated with crystallographic binding and non-binding. Applied to a crystallographic dataset of 957 fragment elaborations in CRMs targeting PHIP(2), a therapeutically relevant bromodomain, our xSAR model demonstrated effectiveness in two proof-of-concept experiments. First, it recovered 26 missed binders in the initial dataset (false negatives), doubling the hit rate and denoising the dataset. Second, it enabled a prospective virtual screen that identified novel hits with informative chemistries and measurable binding affinities. This work establishes a proof-of-concept that xSAR models can be directly extracted from large-scale crystallographic readouts of CRMs, offering a valuable methodology to build SAR models and accelerate design-make-test iterations without requiring CRM hit resynthesis and confirmation. This invites future work to utilise advanced analytics and modelling techniques to further strengthen purification-agnostic workflows.
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Dec 2025
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I04-1-Macromolecular Crystallography (fixed wavelength)
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Serena G.
Piticchio
,
Miriam
Martinez-Cartro
,
Salvatore
Scaffidi
,
Sergio
Rodríguez-Arévalo
,
Andrea
Bagán
,
Ainoa
Sánchez-Arfelis
,
Sarah
Picaud
,
Tobias
Krojer
,
Panagis
Filippakopoulos
,
Carmen
Escolano
,
Xavier
Barril
,
Frank
Von Delft
Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[19301]
Open Access
Abstract: The hydrophobic effect is a central force in molecular recognition, typically attributed to the ordering of water molecules around apolar groups. Hydrophobic interaction sites on proteins are therefore readily predicted based on surface polarity. Yet, in the bromodomain-containing protein 4 (BRD4), a well-known hydrophobic hot spot is paradoxically lined by a network of water molecules. Here we combine binding assays, structural data, molecular dynamics, and free-energy calculations to resolve this apparent contradiction. We show that the water network functions as a hydrophobic recognition motif that cannot accommodate polar groups without disruption. Instead, as the protein pre-organizes the water network, apolar groups can bind with minimal entropic cost. In turn, they reinforce the surrounding hydrogen-bond network, limiting the mobility of the entire protein–water assembly. With this perspective, we identify water networks potentially functioning as hydrophobic motifs in other pharmacological targets, revealing a general but overlooked recognition element with broad implications in drug discovery and protein design.
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Nov 2025
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I04-1-Macromolecular Crystallography (fixed wavelength)
I24-Microfocus Macromolecular Crystallography
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Mingda
Ye
,
Mpho
Makola
,
Mark W.
Richards
,
Joseph A.
Newman
,
Michael
Fairhead
,
Selena G.
Burgess
,
Zhihuang
Wu
,
Elizabeth
Maclean
,
Nathan D.
Wright
,
Lizbe
Koekemoer
,
Andrew
Thompson
,
Gustavo
Arruda Bezerra
,
Gangshun
Yi
,
Huanyu
Li
,
Victor
Rangel
,
Dimitrios
Mamalis
,
Hazel
Aitkenhead
,
Benjamin G.
Davis
,
Robert J. C.
Gilbert
,
Katharina L.
Duerr
,
Richard
Bayliss
,
Opher
Gileadi
,
Frank
Von Delft
Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[26998]
Open Access
Abstract: Design of modular, transferable protein assemblies has broad applicability and in structural biology could help with the ever-troublesome crystallization bottleneck, including finding robustly behaved protein crystals for rapidly characterizing ligands or drug candidates or generating multiple polymorphs to illuminate diverse conformations. Nanobodies as crystallization chaperones are well-established but still unreliable, as we show here. Instead, we show an exemplar of how robust crystallization behavior can be engineered by exploring many combinations (>200) of nanobody surface mutations over several iterations. Critically, what needed testing was crystallization and diffraction quality, since target–nanobody binding affinity is decoupled from crystallizability enhancement. Our study yielded multiple polymorphs, all mediated by the same interface, with dramatically improved resolution and diffraction reliability for some mutants; we thus name them ‘Gluebodies’ (Gbs). We further demonstrate that these Gb mutations do transfer to some other targets, both for achieving robust crystallization in alternative packing forms and for establishing the ability to crystallize a key early stage readout. Since the Gb interface is evidently a favored interaction, it may be broadly applicable for modular assembly; more specifically, this work suggests that Gbs should be routinely attempted for crystallization whenever nanobodies are available.
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Oct 2025
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I04-1-Macromolecular Crystallography (fixed wavelength)
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Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[32633]
Open Access
Abstract: Dengue viruses (DENVs) infect approximately 400 million people each year, and currently, there are no effective therapeutics available. To explore potential starting points for antiviral drug development, we conducted a large-scale crystallographic fragment screen targeting the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) domain of the nonstructural protein 5 (NS5) from DENV serotype 2. Our screening, which involved 1108 fragments, identified 60 hit compounds across various known binding sites, including the active site, N pocket, and RNA tunnel. Additionally, we discovered a novel binding site and a fragment-binding hot spot in thumb site II. These structural findings open amenable avenues for developing non-nucleoside inhibitors and offer valuable insights for future structure-based drug design aimed at DENV and other flaviviral RdRps.
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Sep 2025
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I03-Macromolecular Crystallography
I04-1-Macromolecular Crystallography (fixed wavelength)
I04-Macromolecular Crystallography
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Ekaterina
Kot
,
Matteo P.
Ferla
,
Patricia H.
Hollinshead
,
Charles W. E.
Tomlinson
,
Daren
Fearon
,
Jasmin C.
Aschenbrenner
,
Lizbe
Koekemoer
,
Max
Winokan
,
Michael
Fairhead
,
Xiaomin
Ni
,
Rod
Chalk
,
Katherine S.
England
,
Laura
Ortega Varga
,
Mark
Greer Montgomery
,
Nicholas P.
Mulholland
,
Frank
Von Delft
Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[28172, 34598, 30602, 36049]
Open Access
Abstract: BACKGROUND: In order to alleviate the growing issue of herbicide resistance, diversification of the herbicide portfolio is necessary. A promising yet underutilized mode-of-action is the inhibition of fatty acid thioesterases (FATs), which terminate de novo fatty acid (FA) biosynthesis by releasing FAs from acyl carrier protein (ACP) cofactors. These enzymes impact plant growth and sterility by determining the amount and length of FAs present. In this study we report a crystallographic fragment screening approach for the identification of novel chemical matter targeting FATs. RESULTS: We have solved the crystal structure of Arabidopsis thaliana FatA to 1.5 Å and conducted a crystallographic fragment screen which identified 129 unique fragments bound in 141 different poses. Ten fragments demonstrated on-scale potency, two of these exploiting different interactions to known herbicides. Elaboration of one of the fragments resulted in an improvement of affinity from ~20 μm to ~90 nm KD. Finally, superposition of our crystal structures revealed that some fragments exploit large conformational changes in the substrate binding site. CONCLUSION: We have fully enabled FatA as a target for rapid, rational hit-to-lead development, with robust structural, biophysical and biochemical assays. We provide a set of fragment hits which represent diverse, novel scaffolds that both recapitulate interactions made by current herbicides, and also target novel regions within the active and dimer sites. Our fragments can be readily merged and allow for effective catalogue-based structure–activity relationship (SAR) exploration. Together these data will accelerate the development of novel, alternative herbicides to combat herbicide resistance.
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Sep 2025
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Krios I-Titan Krios I at Diamond
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Gangshun
Yi
,
Dimitrios
Mamalis
,
Mingda
Ye
,
Loic
Carrique
,
Michael
Fairhead
,
Huanyu
Li
,
Katharina L.
Duerr
,
Peijun
Zhang
,
David B.
Sauer
,
Frank
Von Delft
,
Benjamin G.
Davis
,
Robert J. C.
Gilbert
Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[20223, 21004]
Open Access
Abstract: Whilst cryo-electron microscopy(cryo-EM) has become a routine methodology in structural biology, obtaining high-resolution cryo-EM structures of small proteins (<100 kDa) and increasing overall throughput remain challenging. One approach to augment protein size and improve particle alignment involves the use of binding proteins or protein-based scaffolds. However, a given imaging scaffold or linking module may prove inadequate for structure solution and availability of such scaffolds remains limited. Here, we describe a strategy that exploits covalent dimerization of nanobodies to trap an engineered, predisposed nanobody-to-nanobody interface, giving Di-Gembodies as modular constructs created in homomeric and heteromeric forms. By exploiting side-chain-to-side-chain assembly, they can simultaneously display two copies of the same or two distinct proteins through a subunit interface that provides sufficient constraint required for cryo-EM structure determination. We validate this method with multiple soluble and membrane structural targets, down to 14 kDa, demonstrating a flexible and scalable platform for expanded protein structure determination.
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Aug 2025
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I04-1-Macromolecular Crystallography (fixed wavelength)
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Yeojin
Kim
,
Aleksandar
Lučić
,
Christopher
Lenz
,
Frederic
Farges
,
Martin P.
Schwalm
,
Krishna
Saxena
,
Thomas
Hanke
,
Peter G.
Marples
,
Jasmin C.
Aschenbrenner
,
Daren
Fearon
,
Frank
Von Delft
,
Andreas
Kramer
,
Stefan
Knapp
Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[29658]
Open Access
Abstract: Tripartite motif-containing protein 21 (TRIM21), and particularly its PRY-SPRY protein interaction domain, plays a critical role in the immune response by recognizing intracellular antibodies targeting them for degradation. In this study, we performed a crystallographic fragment screening (CFS) campaign to identify potential small molecule binders targeting the PRY-SPRY domain of TRIM21. Our screen identified a total of 109 fragments binding to TRIM21 that were distributed across five distinct binding sites. These fragments have been designed to facilitate straightforward follow-up chemistry, making them ideal starting points for further chemical optimization. A subsequent fragment merging approach demonstrated improved activity. To enable functional validation of compounds with full length human TRIM21, we established a NanoBRET assay suitable for measuring target engagement to the main Fc binding site in life cells. The high-resolution structural data and observed binding modes across the different sites highlight the versatility of the PRY-SPRY domain as a target for small-molecule intervention. The presented data provide a solid foundation for structure-guided ligand design, enabling the rational design of more potent and selective compounds, with the goal to develop bivalent molecules such as Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras (PROTACs).
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Jun 2025
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I03-Macromolecular Crystallography
I04-1-Macromolecular Crystallography (fixed wavelength)
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Harold
Grosjean
,
Anthony
Aimon
,
Storm
Hassell-Hart
,
Warren
Thompson
,
Lizbe
Koekemoer
,
James
Bennett
,
Anthony
Bradley
,
Cameron
Anderson
,
Conor
Wild
,
William J.
Bradshaw
,
Edward A.
Fitzgerald
,
Tobias
Krojer
,
Oleg
Fedorov
,
Philip C.
Biggin
,
John
Spencer
,
Frank
Von Delft
Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[19301]
Abstract: Fragment approaches are long-established in target-based ligand discovery yet their full transformative potential lies dormant, because progressing hits to potency remains underserved by methodological work. The only credible progression paradigm is multiple cycles of costly conventional design-make-test-analyse (DMTA) medicinal chemistry, necessitating picking winners early and discarding others. It is effective to cheaply parallelize large numbers of non-uniform multi-step reactions, because, even without compound purification, a high-quality readout of binding is available, viz. crystallography. This can detect low-level binding of slightly active compounds, which the targeted binding site extracts directly from crude reaction mixtures (CRMs). In this proof-of-concept study, we expand a fragment hit from a crystal-based screen of the bromodomain PHIP2, using array synthesis on low-cost robotics to implement 6 independent multi-step reaction routes of up to 5 steps, attempting the synthesis of 1876 diverse expansions, designs entirely driven by synthetic tractability. The expected product was present in 1108 (59%) CRMs, detected by automated mass spectrometry, 22 individual products were resolved in crystal structures of CRMs added to crystals, providing an initial SAR map, pose stability in 19 and instability in 3 products and resolved stereochemical preference. One compound showed biochemical potency (IC50=34 μM) and affinity (Kd=50 μM) after resynthesis.
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Feb 2025
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Open Access
Abstract: Current strategies centred on either merging or linking initial hits from fragment-based drug design (FBDD) crystallographic screens generally do not fully leaverage 3D structural information. We show that an algorithmic approach (Fragmenstein) that ‘stitches’ the ligand atoms from this structural information together can provide more accurate and reliable predictions for protein–ligand complex conformation than general methods such as pharmacophore-constrained docking. This approach works under the assumption of conserved binding: when a larger molecule is designed containing the initial fragment hit, the common substructure between the two will adopt the same binding mode. Fragmenstein either takes the atomic coordinates of ligands from a experimental fragment screen and combines the atoms together to produce a novel merged virtual compound, or uses them to predict the bound complex for a provided molecule. The molecule is then energy minimised under strong constraints to obtain a structurally plausible conformer. The code is available at https://github.com/oxpig/Fragmenstein.
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Jan 2025
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I04-1-Macromolecular Crystallography (fixed wavelength)
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Martin P.
Schwalm
,
Johannes
Dopfer
,
Adarsh
Kumar
,
Francesco A.
Greco
,
Nicolas
Bauer
,
Frank
Löhr
,
Jan
Heering
,
Sara
Cano-Franco
,
Severin
Lechner
,
Thomas
Hanke
,
Ivana
Jaser
,
Viktoria
Morasch
,
Christopher
Lenz
,
Daren
Fearon
,
Peter G.
Marples
,
Charles W. E.
Tomlinson
,
Lorene
Brunello
,
Krishna
Saxena
,
Nathan B. P.
Adams
,
Frank
Von Delft
,
Susanne
Müller
,
Alexandra
Stolz
,
Ewgenij
Proschak
,
Bernhard
Kuster
,
Stefan
Knapp
,
Vladimir V.
Rogov
Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[29658]
Open Access
Abstract: Recent successes in developing small molecule degraders that act through the ubiquitin system have spurred efforts to extend this technology to other mechanisms, including the autophagosomal-lysosomal pathway. Therefore, reports of autophagosome tethering compounds (ATTECs) have received considerable attention from the drug development community. ATTECs are based on the recruitment of targets to LC3/GABARAP, a family of ubiquitin-like proteins that presumably bind to the autophagosome membrane and tether cargo-loaded autophagy receptors into the autophagosome. In this work, we rigorously tested the target engagement of the reported ATTECs to validate the existing LC3/GABARAP ligands. Surprisingly, we were unable to detect interaction with their designated target LC3 using a diversity of biophysical methods. Intrigued by the idea of developing ATTECs, we evaluated the ligandability of LC3/GABARAP by in silico docking and large-scale crystallographic fragment screening. Data based on approximately 1000 crystal structures revealed that most fragments bound to the HP2 but not to the HP1 pocket within the LIR docking site, suggesting a favorable ligandability of HP2. Through this study, we identified diverse validated LC3/GABARAP ligands and fragments as starting points for chemical probe and ATTEC development.
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Nov 2024
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