Benchmarking Sets for Molecular Docking

Niu Huang, Brian K. Shoichet,* and John J. Irwin*
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California San Francisco, QB3 Building, 1700 4th Street, Box 2550, San Francisco, California 94143-2550
J. Med. Chem., 2006, 49 (23), pp 6789–6801
DOI: 10.1021/jm0608356
Publication Date (Web): October 26, 2006
Copyright © 2006 American Chemical Society
*

 To whom correspondence should be addressed. B.K.S:  phone, 415-514-4126; fax, 415-514-4260; E-mail, shoichet@cgl.ucsf.edu. J.J.I:  phone, 415-514-4127; fax, 415-514-4260; e-mail, jji@cgl.ucsf.edu.

Abstract

Abstract Image

Ligand enrichment among top-ranking hits is a key metric of molecular docking. To avoid bias, decoys should resemble ligands physically, so that enrichment is not simply a separation of gross features, yet be chemically distinct from them, so that they are unlikely to be binders. We have assembled a directory of useful decoys (DUD), with 2950 ligands for 40 different targets. Every ligand has 36 decoy molecules that are physically similar but topologically distinct, leading to a database of 98 266 compounds. For most targets, enrichment was at least half a log better with uncorrected databases such as the MDDR than with DUD, evidence of bias in the former. These calculations also allowed 40 × 40 cross-docking, where the enrichments of each ligand set could be compared for all 40 targets, enabling a specificity metric for the docking screens. DUD is freely available online as a benchmarking set for docking at http://blaster.docking.org/dud/.

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