Allosteric modulation of GPCRs: From structural insights to in silico drug discovery

The design, implementation, and capabilities of an extensible visualization system, UCSF Chimera, are discussed. Chimera is segmented into a core that provides basic services and visualization, and extensions that provide most higher level functionality. This architecture ensures that the extension mechanism satisfies the demands of outside developers who wish to incorporate new features. Two unusual extensions are presented: Multiscale, which adds the ability to visualize large-scale molecular assemblies such as viral coats, and Collaboratory, which allows researchers to share a Chimera session interactively despite being at separate locales. Other extensions include Multalign Viewer, for showing multiple sequence alignments and associated structures; ViewDock, for screening docked ligand orientations; Movie, for replaying molecular dynamics trajectories; and Volume Viewer, for display and analysis of volumetric data. A discussion of the usage of Chimera in real-world situations is given, along with anticipated future directions. Chimera includes full user documentation, is free to academic and nonprofit users, and is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Apple Mac OS X, SGI IRIX, and HP Tru64 Unix from http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/. Copyright 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the most intensively studied drug targets, largely due to their substantial involvement in human pathophysiology and their pharmacological tractability. Here, we report the first analysis of all GPCR drugs and agents in clinical trials. This reveals the current trends across molecule types, drug targets and therapeutic indications, including showing that 481 drugs (~34% of all drugs approved by the FDA) act at 107 unique GPCR targets. Approximately 320 agents are currently in clinical trials, of which ~36% target 64 potentially novel GPCR targets without an approved drug, and the number of biological drugs, allosteric modulators and biased agonists has grown. The major disease indications for GPCR modulators show a shift towards diabetes, obesity, and Alzheimer’s disease, while other central nervous system disorders remain highly represented. The 227 (57%) non-olfactory GPCRs that are yet to be explored in clinical trials have broad untapped therapeutic potential, particularly in genetic and immune system disorders. Finally, we provide an interactive online resource to analyse and infer trends in GPCR drug discovery.