MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort

Allosteric Covalent Inhibitors of the STAT3 Transcription Factor from Virtual Screening

2025· article· en· W4410124772 on OpenAlexafffund
Tibor Viktor Szalai, V. di Lorenzo, Nikolett Péczka, Levente M. Mihalovits, László Petri, Qirat F. Ashraf, Elvin D. de Araujo, Viktor Honti, Dávid Bajusz, György M. Keserű

Bibliographic record

VenueACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicCytokine Signaling Pathways and Interactions
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
FundersInstitute of GeneticsNational Research, Development and Innovation OfficeUniversity of Toronto MississaugaNemzeti Kutatási Fejlesztési és Innovációs HivatalUniversity of TorontoBudapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi EgyetemSchweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen ForschungMagyar Tudományos Akadémia
KeywordsAllosteric regulationVirtual screeningTranscription factorSTAT3Transcription (linguistics)Covalent bondChemistryComputational biologyComputer scienceEnzymeBiochemistryBiologyDrug discoveryPhosphorylationGene

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The STAT family of transcription factors are important signaling hubs, with several of them, particularly STAT3, being emerging oncotargets already investigated in clinical trials. The modular structure of STAT3 nominates several of its protein domains as possible drug targets, but their exploitation with potential small-molecule inhibitors has been unevenly distributed so far, with past efforts highly favoring the conserved SH2 domain. Here, we have targeted a sparsely studied binding site at the junction of the coiled-coil and DNA-binding domains and discovered several new lead-like covalent inhibitors by virtual screening. The most favorable hit compound has been explored via structure-guided hit expansion and optimized into a low micromolar inhibitor. This compound can serve as a chemical biology tool against this site in future exploratory studies or form the basis of a more advanced stage of lead optimization.

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: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.005
Threshold uncertainty score0.016

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0010.000
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0050.001

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 head0.016
GPT teacher head0.257
Teacher spread0.241 · 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 designSimulation or modeling
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

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueACS Medicinal Chemistry LettersSame topicCytokine Signaling Pathways and InteractionsFrench-language works237,207