Incorporation of predicted protein structures in tractability scores in the Open Targets Platform

A recent question posed in our GitHub issue tracker (see Issue #1886), was whether the Open Targets team had any plans to incorporate new structure prediction models in the current tractability scoring system, via AlphaFold or RoseTTAFold, for example.

We thought the ideas shared might be of interest to the Community, so we are relaying the discussion here.

Paraphrasing @dsuveges’s comment, we are in the process of enriching our data with structure-based information. Sophisticated methods such as AlphaFold created a vast amount of knowledge, and we are exploring ways to harness this new data.

In a paper published in Science, Humphreys et al. combined AlphaFold and RoseTTAFold to predict therapeutically relevant protein complexes. This type of work is on our radar and we are exploring the possibility of sourcing interactions from the corresponding modelarchive page.

If you have a particular application in mind, let us know! We are always open to suggestions.

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