Hits Discovery on the Androgen Receptor: In Silico Approaches to Identify Agonist Compounds

Abstract

The androgen receptor (AR) is a transcription factor that plays a key role in sexual phenotype and neuromuscular development. AR can be modulated by exogenous compounds such as pharmaceuticals or chemicals present in the environment, and particularly by AR agonist compounds that mimic the action of endogenous agonist ligands and whether restore or alter the AR endocrine system functions. The activation of AR must be correctly balanced and identifying potent AR agonist compounds is of high interest to both propose treatments for certain diseases, or to predict the risk related to agonist chemicals exposure. The development of in silico approaches and the publication of structural, affinity and activity data provide a good framework to develop rational AR hits prediction models. Herein, we present a docking and a pharmacophore modeling strategy to help identifying AR agonist compounds. All models were trained on the NR-DBIND that provides high quality binding data on AR and tested on AR-agonist activity assays from the Tox21 initiative. Both methods display high performance on the NR-DBIND set and could serve as starting point for biologists and toxicologists. Yet, the pharmacophore models still need data feeding to be used as large scope undesired effect prediction models.