Deep Neural Network Classifier for Virtual Screening Inhibitors of (S)-Adenosyl-L-Methionine (SAM)-Dependent Methyltransferase Family

The (S)-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM)-dependent methyltransferases play essential roles in post-translational modifications (PTMs) and other miscellaneous biological processes, and are implicated in the pathogenesis of various genetic disorders and cancers. Increasing efforts have been committed toward discovering novel PTM inhibitors targeting the (S)-Adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM)-binding site and the substrate-binding site of methyltransferases, among which virtual screening (VS) and structure-based drug design (SBDD) are the most frequently used strategies. Here, we report the development of a target-specific scoring model for compound VS, which predict the likelihood of the compound being a potential inhibitor for the SAM-binding pocket of a given methyltransferase. Protein-ligand interaction characterized by Fingerprinting Triplets of Interaction Pseudoatoms was used as the input feature, and a binary classifier based on deep neural networks is trained to build the scoring model. This model enhances the efficiency of the existing strategies used for discovering novel chemical modulators of methyltransferase, which is crucial for understanding and exploring the complexity of epigenetic target space.