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Record W4407585709 · doi:10.1038/s41467-025-56213-1

Structural insights into human brachyury DNA recognition and discovery of progressible binders for cancer therapy

2025· article· en· W4407585709 on OpenAlexfundno aff
J.A. Newman, A.E. Gavard, Nergis Imprachim, H. Aitkenhead, Hadley E. Sheppard, Robert te Poele, Paul A. Clarke, Mohammad Anwar Hossain, Louisa Temme, Hans J. Oh, Carrow I. Wells, Zachary W. Davis‐Gilbert, Paul Workman, O. Gileadi, David H. Drewry

Bibliographic record

VenueNature Communications · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicSarcoma Diagnosis and Treatment
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersGenentechCancer Research UKWellcome TrustNational Cancer InstituteEuropean Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and AssociationsMerck KGaAOntario Genomics InstituteBergmark FoundationPfizerChordoma FoundationOntario GenomicsFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São PauloGenome CanadaDiamond Light SourceMcGill UniversityBayer
KeywordsBrachyuryComputational biologyDNASmall moleculeContext (archaeology)Transcription factorCancerBiologyGeneticsGene

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Brachyury is a transcription factor that plays an essential role in tumour growth of the rare bone cancer chordoma and is implicated in other solid tumours. Brachyury is minimally expressed in healthy tissues, making it a potential therapeutic target. Unfortunately, as a ligandless transcription factor, brachyury has historically been considered undruggable. To investigate direct targeting of brachyury by small molecules, we determine the structure of human brachyury both alone and in complex with DNA. The structures provide insights into DNA binding and the context of the chordoma associated G177D variant. We use crystallographic fragment screening to identify hotspots on numerous pockets on the brachyury surface. Finally, we perform follow-up chemistry on fragment hits and describe the progression of a thiazole chemical series into binders with low µM potency. Thus we show that brachyury is ligandable and provide an example of how crystallographic fragment screening may be used to target protein classes that are difficult to address using other approaches.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.003
Threshold uncertainty score0.009

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.056
GPT teacher head0.385
Teacher spread0.329 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations6
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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