Discovery of BRD4 bromodomain inhibitors by fragment-based high-throughput docking

Bromodomains (BRDs) recognize acetyl-lysine modified histone tails mediating epigenetic processes. BRD4, a protein containing two bromodomains, has emerged as an attractive therapeutic target for several types of cancer as well as inflammatory diseases. Using a fragment-based in silico screening approach, we identified two small molecules that bind to the first bromodomain of BRD4 with low-micromolar affinity and favorable ligand efficiency (0.37 kcal/mol per non-hydrogen atom), selectively over other families of bromodomains. Notably, the hit rate of the fragment-based in silico approach is about 10% as only 24 putative inhibitors, from an initial library of about 9 million molecules, were tested in vitro.