AnalogExplorer2 – Stereochemistry sensitive graphical analysis of large analog series

Ye Hu; Bijun Zhang; Martin Vogt; Jürgen Bajorath

doi:10.12688/f1000research.7146.1

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Method Article

AnalogExplorer2 – Stereochemistry sensitive graphical analysis of large analog series

[version 1; peer review: 2 approved]

Ye Hu¹, Bijun Zhang¹, Martin Vogt¹, Jürgen Bajorath ¹

PUBLISHED 09 Oct 2015

Author details Author details

¹ Department of Life Science Informatics, B-IT, LIMES Program Unit Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Germany

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Abstract

AnalogExplorer is a computational methodology for the extraction and organization of series of structural analogs from compound data sets and their graphical analysis. The method is suitable for the analysis of large analog series originating from lead optimization programs. Herein we report AnalogExplorer2 designed to explicitly take stereochemical information during graphical analysis into account and describe a freely available deposition of the original AnalogExplorer program, AnalogExplorer2, and exemplary compound sets to illustrate their use.

Keywords

Medicinal chemistry, analog series, computational design, graphical analysis, structure-activity relationships, open access software

Corresponding author: Jürgen Bajorath

Competing interests: No competing interests were declared.

Grant information: The authors declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. BZ is supported by the China Scholarship Council. The use of OpenEye’s OEChem Toolkit was made possible by their free academic licensing program.

Copyright: © 2015 Hu Y et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite: Hu Y, Zhang B, Vogt M and Bajorath J. AnalogExplorer2 – Stereochemistry sensitive graphical analysis of large analog series [version 1; peer review: 2 approved]. F1000Research 2015, 4(Chem Inf Sci):1031 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.7146.1) First published: 09 Oct 2015, 4(Chem Inf Sci):1031 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.7146.1) Latest published: 09 Oct 2015, 4(Chem Inf Sci):1031 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.7146.1)

Introduction

In medicinal chemistry, analog series are typically analyzed in R-group tables. Once analog series become so large that they are difficult to represent and study in conventional R-group tables, computational tools are indispensable for their exploration. Therefore, different computational methods have been introduced for graphical analysis of analog series^1–9. Many of these approaches are based on the determination of maximum common substructures (MCS) of compound series and focus on substituents of common cores, while others employ the matched molecular pair¹⁰ formalism to define analog series. Among these computational methods is AnalogExplorer⁹, which has been designed to systematically organize and graphically analyze analog series and associated structure-activity relationship (SAR) information. AnalogExplorer initially identifies analog series on the basis of hierarchical molecular scaffolds¹¹ and then determines their MCS for further analysis. Accordingly, the method is not limited to the study of individual analog series but can also be applied to extract series from structurally heterogeneous compound sets. For example, AnalogExplorer is directly applicable to late-stage lead optimization sets that often contain multiple series with large numbers of analogs.

Herein we introduce AnalogExplorer2, an extension of the approach, which explicitly considers stereoisomers during graphical analysis, providing a detailed account of stereochemistry and its influence on SARs. AnalogExplorer2 is publicly available. Hence, we also report an open access deposition of the original AnalogExplorer program and AnalogExplorer2 as well as exemplary data sets assembled to illustrate the workflow of graphical analysis and help users become familiar with the program¹².

Methodology

Organization of analog series

AnalogExplorer systematically determines substitution sites or site combinations in analog series and divides series into subsets having varying R-groups at the same site(s). Analog series are initially identified on the basis of hierarchical molecular scaffolds¹¹. For a series of analogs sharing the same scaffold, the maximum common substructure (MCS) is then determined, as illustrated in Figure 1, and used for R-group decomposition in order to index and identify all substitution sites and the respective R-groups for each compound in a series.

Figure 1. Maximum common substructure (MCS).

Shown are six structurally analogous compounds represented by their MCS (right) with five substitution sites (R1–R5). For each compound, the corresponding substituents are highlighted in blue.

On the basis of the MCS, an analog series is divided into subsets of compounds with varying R-groups at the same substitution site or site combination. The organization is compound-based such that each member of a series only occurs in one subset. Unique compound subsets provide the basis for graphical analysis, as discussed in the following. Further methodological details are provided in the original AnalogExplorer reference⁹.

Graphical components

AnalogExplorer consists of three graphical components. The complete graph (Figure 2a) captures all possible substitution sites and site combinations for a series following R-group decomposition (by design it is a directed acyclic graph). Each node represents a substitution site or site combination and all compounds with varying R-groups at the site(s). The root node 0 corresponds to a (hypothetical) compound with no R-group at any site. Node 1 represents analogs that only contain R-groups at R1 and node 12 compounds with R-groups at R1 and R2 etc. Nodes are arranged in different layers. For example, layer 1 consists of all nodes with one substitution site and layer 2 of all nodes with two sites. Edges between nodes in adjacent layers indicate all possible subset relationships, i.e. an edge is drawn if the substitution site(s) represented by a node is a subset of a site combination of another node. As indicated in Figure 2a, nodes are scaled in size according to the number of analogs comprising the subset they represent and color-coded according to the mean potency of the analogs. In addition, node border thickness indicates the potency range covered by a subset. Furthermore, white (empty) nodes correspond to possible site combinations for which no analogs are currently available within a given series. In the reduced graph, all empty nodes and connecting edges are removed for clarity (Figure 2b). Thus, the reduced graph provides a convenient format for the analysis of individual series. As the third graphical component, R-group trees are provided for each substitution site and site combination, as illustrated in Figure 2c. In the R-group tree, substitution sites for a given subset are arranged in different layers, the order of which is determined by the number of unique R-groups at each site. All R-groups are displayed in the tree. Each leaf node represents an analog (colored according to its potency). Intermediate nodes represent subsets of analogs sharing the same substituents at corresponding site(s) (and are colored by mean analog potency).

Figure 2. AnalogExplorer graphs.

(a) Shown is the complete graph for a series of 25 analogs active against serotonin 7 receptor. (b) The reduced graph is displayed obtained from (a) by removing all empty nodes and edges between them. (c) The R-group tree for substitution site combination 1345 is shown. All R-groups are provided for individual tree nodes. Stereoisomers and their corresponding pK_i values are given at the bottom. Abbreviation: OoM, order of magnitude.

Given its design, AnalogExplorer provides a systematic hierarchical organization of all possible substitution sites or site combinations for an analog series (complete graph) and enables the elucidation of SAR patterns within the hierarchy (reduced graph) and at further increased resolution for analog subsets (R-group trees). The approach is particularly suitable for the analysis of large analog series because subsets of such series associated with interesting SAR information can be selectively displayed and analyzed.

Stereochemical information

The explicit consideration of stereochemistry during graphical analysis at the level of R-group trees is the major methodological enhancement of AnalogExplorer2 (in addition to further increased consistency of compound mapping to MCS considering intra-molecular symmetry). In the original R-group tree structure, nodes located in the same layer and originated from the same parent node are associated with distinct R-groups. Therefore, stereoisomers having the same substituents are combined into a single leaf node. Hence if a terminal node is associated with more than one compound, stereoisomers are present. In AnalogExplorer2, stereoisomers are explicitly considered, as illustrated in Figure 2c. Each stereoisomer is represented by a single node and stereoisomers belonging to the same subset (i.e. compounds with different stereochemistry at the same site) are identified by a unique index (i.e. ‘1’ for the three stereoisomers in Figure 2c). If different subsets of stereoisomers are present in an R-group tree, incremental indices are used to identify and distinguish them (i.e. ‘1’, ‘2’ etc.).

Implementation

Routines for scaffold, analog, and MCS identification, R-group decomposition, and indexing of substitution sites are implemented in Java using the OpenEye OEChem toolkit version 2.0.2 (Open Eye Scientific Software; http://www.eyesopen.com). Therefore, this toolkit is required to execute the program. All graphical components of AnalogExplorer and AnalogExplorer2 are implemented using the open source Java package JUNG version 2.0.1 (http://jung.sourceforge.net/). Potential inconsistencies with subsequent versions of OEChem or JUNG can be avoided by using the specified versions.

Program use

The executable program utilizes standard SD files as input and generates complete or reduced graphs for all or individual series, depending on the user’s preference. The initial graph layout is produced by the DAGLayout algorithm of JUNG (http://jung.sourceforge.net/) and usually interactively modified for graphical analysis. The number of compounds assigned to each node and their mean potency can be viewed by navigating the graph. R-group trees representing compound subsets are generated together with the complete or reduced graph. In each R-group tree, the substituents associated with individual nodes, compounds (leaf nodes), and corresponding potency values can also be viewed. Subsets of stereoisomers, if available, are depicted using numerical indices, as discussed. Furthermore, an output file is generated reporting compounds belonging to individual subsets.

Exemplary applications

AnalogExplorer2 can be used for different types of SAR analysis, as illustrated by a few exemplary applications. Compound data were taken from ChEMBL¹³ version 20. Figure 3 displays the reduced graph for a series of 45 alpha-1a adrenergic receptor ligands with a total of seven substitution sites and the R-group tree for an exemplary three-site combination. The tree reveals a clear SAR pattern (with increasing potency of analogs from the bottom left to the right) and identifies six (uniquely indexed) pairs of stereoisomers among these analogs. Figure 4 provides a corresponding representation for a series of 64 matrix metalloproteinase 9 inhibitors and compares R-group trees for three substitution sites. It becomes apparent that substituents attached to R4 alone or in combination with other sites consistently yield compounds having only low potency. In Figure 5, target-specific reduced graphs are compared for a series of 32 analogs with a total of nine substitution sites and activity against two dipeptidyl peptidases (DPP4 and DPP8). The graphs generated for the same analog series display different compound potency distributions, reflecting a selectivity tendency for DPP4 over DPP8. Figure 6 shows reduced graphs for six different analog series with activity against the same kinase. The graphs reveal different structural content and a different degree of chemical exploration among these series as well as differences in the SAR information they provide. In Figure 7, two of these series are combined into a new single series by re-calculating the MCS that comprises 43 analogs with a total of eight substitution sites. The reduced graph captures the structural organization and activity information of this combined series.

Figure 3. Alpha-1a adrenergic receptor ligands.

At the top, the MCS for a series of 45 analogs active against alpha-1a adrenergic receptor is shown. In addition, the corresponding reduced graph (middle, left) and R-group tree for substitution site combination 247 (middle, right) are displayed. At the bottom, six pairs of stereoisomers are shown. For each compound, its pK_i value is given.

Figure 4. Matrix metalloproteinase 9 inhibitors.

Shown is the reduced graph for a series of 64 analogous inhibitors of matrix metalloproteinase 9. R-group trees of three substitution sites (nodes 3, 4 and 5; dashed box) are shown on the right. For each R-group tree, substituents are provided.

Figure 5. Analogs with multi-target activities.

Shown are reduced graphs for analog series with inhibitory activity against dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP4; left) and VIII (DPP8; right). Three representative compounds associated with node 17 (dashed box) are shown at the bottom. For each compound, the potency value (pIC₅₀) for DPP4 and DPP8 is reported in a green and red box, respectively.

Figure 6. Multiple series of serine/threonine-protein kinase PIM2 inhibitors.

Shown are reduced graphs for six different series of PIM2 kinase inhibitors (capital letters A–F represent series identifiers). For each series, corresponding MCS and reduced graph are shown.

Figure 7. Combined series.

Series A and E from Figure 6 are combined into a single series by determining their MCS yielding eight substitution sites (left). The reduced graph of the combined series is shown (right) that consists of 43 analogs.

Software and data availability

The following tools and data sets are made publicly available without restrictions via a deposition on the ZENODO open access platform¹². Three executable files of the original AnalogExplorer program are provided for different applications including the analysis of multiple analog series from a given compound set, analysis of an individual series, and selectivity analysis (according to Figure 5). With the exception of the OpenEye OEChem library, jar files of the required external libraries are also provided. In addition, all compound sets analyzed in the original publication⁹ are deposited. These compound sets were taken from ChEMBL version 18. Furthermore, three executable files are made available for AnalogExplorer2 (for multiple analog series, individual series, and selectivity analysis) as well as the compound sets for which graph representations are reported herein. These compounds were taken from ChEMBL version 20. A “readme” document with detailed explanations is also provided as a part of the deposition.

Conclusions

The AnalogExplorer method was designed for the systematic organization and graphical analysis of large series of analogs, which frequently originate from lead optimization efforts. Herein, an extension of the methodology has been introduced. AnalogExplorer2 explicitly accounts for all stereoisomers during graphical analysis and SAR exploration. The AnalogExplorer2 program is made freely available to the scientific community.

Author contributions

JB conceived the study, YH designed the stereo sensitive extension of AnalogExplorer, BZ carried out the implementation, and MV reviewed the programs. JB and YH wrote the manuscript, and all authors examined the manuscript and agreed to the final content.

Competing interests

No competing interests were declared.

Grant information

The authors declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. BZ is supported by the China Scholarship Council. The use of OpenEye’s OEChem Toolkit was made possible by their free academic licensing program.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Pat Walters for inspiring the extension of AnalogExplorer to explicitly account for stereoisomers in R-group trees.

Faculty Opinions recommended

References

1. Agrafiotis DK, Shemanarev M, Connolly PJ, et al.: SAR maps: a new SAR visualization technique for medicinal chemists. J Med Chem. 2007; 50(24): 5926–5937. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
2. Kolpak J, Connolly PJ, Lobanov VS, et al.: Enhanced SAR maps: expanding the data rendering capabilities of a popular medicinal chemistry tool. J Chem Inf Model. 2009; 49(10): 2221–2230. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
3. Peltason L, Weskamp N, Teckentrup A, et al.: Exploration of structure-activity relationship determinants in analogue series. J Med Chem. 2009; 52(10): 3212–3224. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
4. Wawer M, Bajorath J: Similarity-potency trees: a method to search for SAR information in compound data sets and derive SAR rules. J Chem Inf Model. 2010; 50(8): 1395–1409. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
5. Agrafiotis DK, Wiener JJ, Skalkin A, et al.: Single R-Group Polymorphisms (SRPs) and R-cliffs: an intuitive framework for analyzing and visualizing activity cliffs in a single analog series. J Chem Inf Model. 2011; 51(5): 1122–1131. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
6. Wassermann AM, Bajorath J: Directed R-group combination graph: a methodology to uncover structure-activity relationship patterns in a series of analogues. J Med Chem. 2012; 55(3): 1215–1226. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
7. Wassermann AM, Haebel P, Weskamp N, et al.: SAR matrices: automated extraction of information-rich SAR tables from large compound data sets. J Chem Inf Model. 2012; 52(7): 1769–1776. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
8. Gupta-Ostermann D, Bajorath J: The ‘SAR matrix’ method and its extensions for applications in medicinal chemistry and chemogenomics [v2; ref status: indexed, http://f1000r.es/3rg]. F1000Res. 2014; 3: 113. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | Free Full Text
9. Zhang B, Hu Y, Bajorath J: AnalogExplorer: a new method for graphical analysis of analog series and associated structure-activity relationship information. J Med Chem. 2014; 57(21): 9184–9194. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
10. Kenny PW, Sadowski J: Structure Modification in Chemical Databases. In Chemoinformatics in Drug Discovery. Oprea TI, (Ed.), Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, Germany, 2005; 271–285. Publisher Full Text
11. Bemis GW, Murcko MA: The properties of known drugs. 1. Molecular frameworks. J Med Chem. 1996; 39(15): 2887–2893. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text
12. Hu Y, Zhang B, Vogt M, et al.: AnalogExplorer and AnalogExplorer2. ZENODO. 2015. Data Source
13. Bento AP, Gaulton A, Hersey A, et al.: The ChEMBL bioactivity database: an update. Nucleic Acids Res. 2014; 42(Database issue): D1083–D1090. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | Free Full Text

Comments on this article Comments (1)

Version 1

VERSION 1 PUBLISHED 09 Oct 2015

Author Response (F1000Research Advisory Board Member) 04 Nov 2015

Jürgen Bajorath, Department of Life Science Informatics, B-IT, LIMES Program Unit Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Germany

04 Nov 2015

Author Response F1000Research Advisory Board Member
We thank both reviewers for their constructive comments and appreciate the positive feedback. We agree that a future release of this program should best make use of a publicly available ... Continue reading
We thank both reviewers for their constructive comments and appreciate the positive feedback. We agree that a future release of this program should best make use of a publicly available toolkit.

Concerning the OEChem toolkit version dependence referred to in the paper, especially concerning the java jar file, as pointed out by Carleton Sage, please see:

https://docs.eyesopen.com/toolkits/java/quickstart-java/install.html

Final statement:
"There is a known bug concerning OpenEye constants that occurs when compiling against an older version of the OpenEye jar and running against a newer version of the OpenEye jar. Please make sure to run against Java programs against the same version it was compiled with."

Solution:
Users are required to obtain the same OpenEye version we used (Oct 2, 2014):
Visit http://eyesopen.com
Login
Go to support/Downloads
Select Platform (e.g. Windows)
Select "show all versions (including old)"
Click proceed.
From the list download OpenEye-Java-2014.Oct.2-<platform>-<arch>.zip where <platform> corresponds to the operating system, e.g. Windows, and <arch> is either x32 or x64.
Extract/open the archive and enter the lib folder
The lib folder contains oejava-2014.Oct.2-<platform>-<arch>.jar; copy this file to the lib folder of AnalogExplorer.
Run AnalogExplorer.bat
We thank both reviewers for their constructive comments and appreciate the positive feedback. We agree that a future release of this program should best make use of a publicly available toolkit.

Concerning the OEChem toolkit version dependence referred to in the paper, especially concerning the java jar file, as pointed out by Carleton Sage, please see:

https://docs.eyesopen.com/toolkits/java/quickstart-java/install.html

Final statement:
"There is a known bug concerning OpenEye constants that occurs when compiling against an older version of the OpenEye jar and running against a newer version of the OpenEye jar. Please make sure to run against Java programs against the same version it was compiled with."

Solution:
Users are required to obtain the same OpenEye version we used (Oct 2, 2014):
Visit http://eyesopen.com
Login
Go to support/Downloads
Select Platform (e.g. Windows)
Select "show all versions (including old)"
Click proceed.
From the list download OpenEye-Java-2014.Oct.2-<platform>-<arch>.zip where <platform> corresponds to the operating system, e.g. Windows, and <arch> is either x32 or x64.
Extract/open the archive and enter the lib folder
The lib folder contains oejava-2014.Oct.2-<platform>-<arch>.jar; copy this file to the lib folder of AnalogExplorer.
Run AnalogExplorer.bat
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close
Report a concern
Comment

Author details Author details

¹ Department of Life Science Informatics, B-IT, LIMES Program Unit Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Germany

Competing interests

No competing interests were declared.

Grant information

The authors declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. BZ is supported by the China Scholarship Council. The use of OpenEye’s OEChem Toolkit was made possible by their free academic licensing program.

Article Versions (1)

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Published: 09 Oct 2015, 4:1031

https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.7146.1

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© 2015 Hu Y et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Hu Y, Zhang B, Vogt M and Bajorath J. AnalogExplorer2 – Stereochemistry sensitive graphical analysis of large analog series [version 1; peer review: 2 approved]. F1000Research 2015, 4(Chem Inf Sci):1031 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.7146.1)

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Reviewer Report 04 Nov 2015

Carleton Sage, Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc, San Diego, CA, USA

Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.7699.r11071

The authors provide an extension to AnalogExplorer incorporating stereochemistry, and important extension of the method. This method of analysing complicated compound data sets is sophisticated and easy to use. The approach to communicating results is intuitive both from the perspective ... Continue reading

The authors provide an extension to AnalogExplorer incorporating stereochemistry, and important extension of the method. This method of analysing complicated compound data sets is sophisticated and easy to use. The approach to communicating results is intuitive both from the perspective of the trends in the experimental data with respect to the compounds that have been made, but also, in complete graph view, provide insight into important regions of the dataset that have not yet been investigated. This tool will be very useful in the exploration of medicinal chemistry datasets in both industry and academia.

I have downloaded and run the software on a windows workstation using both the provided datasets and internally generated ones – the software works as described with two minor issues cropped up. First, the software depends not only on the OEChem Toolkit, but also requires OEDepict (both licenses are available from Openeye Scientific). Second, the software depends specifically on the precise OEChem Toolkit java jar file (oejava-2014.Oct.2-Windows-x64.jar) – it will fail without the correct jar file.

On balance AnalogExplorer2 is a very useful tool for exploring compound data sets. It could be made more widely useful if it were to be adapted to run on an open source chemical toolkit such as RDKit. Nonetheless, I commend the authors for making their software available to the research community.

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

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Reviewer Report 15 Oct 2015

Peter Ertl, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland

Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.7699.r10815

Analysis of diverse molecular datasets is one of the most common tasks a computational chemist in pharmaceutical industry, but also in academia is facing daily. The tool presented in this manuscript – the AnalogExplorer2 supports this process and makes it ... Continue reading

Analysis of diverse molecular datasets is one of the most common tasks a computational chemist in pharmaceutical industry, but also in academia is facing daily. The tool presented in this manuscript – the AnalogExplorer2 supports this process and makes it easier. Enhancement to previously published AnalogExplorer presented here, namely support for handling of stereoisomers is indeed important, since in large number of complex SAR datasets molecules with the same constitution but different stereochemistry are present. And in some cases differences in bioactivity for different stereoisomers are significant.
Several examples shown in the manuscript illustrate nicely the powerful visualization capabilities of this tool, including maximum common substructure visualization, substituent tree visualization and selectivity analysis. These visualizations allow to understand the SAR even for the quite complex datasets.

The authors made the executable version of the tool freely available for download. This is a good news. But since the tool is based on the OEChem library only users with a valid OEChem license would be able to use it. My recommendation for the future versions of AnalogExplorer would be to make the interface to its cheminformatics processing modular, so it would be possible to plug the tool also to open source cheminformatics toolkits like RDKit or CDK and make in this way the AnalogExplorer a truly free tool for graphical analysis of complex molecular datasets.

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

CITE

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Comments on this article Comments (1)

Version 1

VERSION 1 PUBLISHED 09 Oct 2015

Author Response (F1000Research Advisory Board Member) 04 Nov 2015

Jürgen Bajorath, Department of Life Science Informatics, B-IT, LIMES Program Unit Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Germany

04 Nov 2015

Author Response F1000Research Advisory Board Member
We thank both reviewers for their constructive comments and appreciate the positive feedback. We agree that a future release of this program should best make use of a publicly available ... Continue reading
We thank both reviewers for their constructive comments and appreciate the positive feedback. We agree that a future release of this program should best make use of a publicly available toolkit.

Concerning the OEChem toolkit version dependence referred to in the paper, especially concerning the java jar file, as pointed out by Carleton Sage, please see:

https://docs.eyesopen.com/toolkits/java/quickstart-java/install.html

Final statement:
"There is a known bug concerning OpenEye constants that occurs when compiling against an older version of the OpenEye jar and running against a newer version of the OpenEye jar. Please make sure to run against Java programs against the same version it was compiled with."

Solution:
Users are required to obtain the same OpenEye version we used (Oct 2, 2014):
Visit http://eyesopen.com
Login
Go to support/Downloads
Select Platform (e.g. Windows)
Select "show all versions (including old)"
Click proceed.
From the list download OpenEye-Java-2014.Oct.2-<platform>-<arch>.zip where <platform> corresponds to the operating system, e.g. Windows, and <arch> is either x32 or x64.
Extract/open the archive and enter the lib folder
The lib folder contains oejava-2014.Oct.2-<platform>-<arch>.jar; copy this file to the lib folder of AnalogExplorer.
Run AnalogExplorer.bat
We thank both reviewers for their constructive comments and appreciate the positive feedback. We agree that a future release of this program should best make use of a publicly available toolkit.

Concerning the OEChem toolkit version dependence referred to in the paper, especially concerning the java jar file, as pointed out by Carleton Sage, please see:

https://docs.eyesopen.com/toolkits/java/quickstart-java/install.html

Final statement:
"There is a known bug concerning OpenEye constants that occurs when compiling against an older version of the OpenEye jar and running against a newer version of the OpenEye jar. Please make sure to run against Java programs against the same version it was compiled with."

Solution:
Users are required to obtain the same OpenEye version we used (Oct 2, 2014):
Visit http://eyesopen.com
Login
Go to support/Downloads
Select Platform (e.g. Windows)
Select "show all versions (including old)"
Click proceed.
From the list download OpenEye-Java-2014.Oct.2-<platform>-<arch>.zip where <platform> corresponds to the operating system, e.g. Windows, and <arch> is either x32 or x64.
Extract/open the archive and enter the lib folder
The lib folder contains oejava-2014.Oct.2-<platform>-<arch>.jar; copy this file to the lib folder of AnalogExplorer.
Run AnalogExplorer.bat
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close
Report a concern
Comment

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Peter Ertl, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland
Carleton Sage, Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc, San Diego, USA

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Carleton Sage, Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc, San Diego, CA, USA

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Approved

The authors provide an extension to AnalogExplorer incorporating stereochemistry, and important extension of the method. This method of analysing complicated compound data sets is sophisticated and easy to use. The approach to communicating results is intuitive both from the perspective of the trends in the experimental data with respect to the compounds that have been made, but also, in complete graph view, provide insight into important regions of the dataset that have not yet been investigated. This tool will be very useful in the exploration of medicinal chemistry datasets in both industry and academia.

I have downloaded and run the software on a windows workstation using both the provided datasets and internally generated ones – the software works as described with two minor issues cropped up. First, the software depends not only on the OEChem Toolkit, but also requires OEDepict (both licenses are available from Openeye Scientific). Second, the software depends specifically on the precise OEChem Toolkit java jar file (oejava-2014.Oct.2-Windows-x64.jar) – it will fail without the correct jar file.

On balance AnalogExplorer2 is a very useful tool for exploring compound data sets. It could be made more widely useful if it were to be adapted to run on an open source chemical toolkit such as RDKit. Nonetheless, I commend the authors for making their software available to the research community.

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

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Reviewer Report

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15 Oct 2015 | for Version 1

Peter Ertl, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland

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Approved

Analysis of diverse molecular datasets is one of the most common tasks a computational chemist in pharmaceutical industry, but also in academia is facing daily. The tool presented in this manuscript – the AnalogExplorer2 supports this process and makes it easier. Enhancement to previously published AnalogExplorer presented here, namely support for handling of stereoisomers is indeed important, since in large number of complex SAR datasets molecules with the same constitution but different stereochemistry are present. And in some cases differences in bioactivity for different stereoisomers are significant.
Several examples shown in the manuscript illustrate nicely the powerful visualization capabilities of this tool, including maximum common substructure visualization, substituent tree visualization and selectivity analysis. These visualizations allow to understand the SAR even for the quite complex datasets.

The authors made the executable version of the tool freely available for download. This is a good news. But since the tool is based on the OEChem library only users with a valid OEChem license would be able to use it. My recommendation for the future versions of AnalogExplorer would be to make the interface to its cheminformatics processing modular, so it would be possible to plug the tool also to open source cheminformatics toolkits like RDKit or CDK and make in this way the AnalogExplorer a truly free tool for graphical analysis of complex molecular datasets.

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AnalogExplorer2 – Stereochemistry sensitive graphical analysis of large analog series

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Methodology

Organization of analog series

Figure 1. Maximum common substructure (MCS).

Graphical components

Figure 2. AnalogExplorer graphs.

Stereochemical information

Implementation

Program use

Exemplary applications

Figure 3. Alpha-1a adrenergic receptor ligands.

Figure 4. Matrix metalloproteinase 9 inhibitors.

Figure 5. Analogs with multi-target activities.

Figure 6. Multiple series of serine/threonine-protein kinase PIM2 inhibitors.

Figure 7. Combined series.

Software and data availability

Conclusions

Author contributions

Competing interests

Grant information

Acknowledgements

References

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