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Analysis of institutional authors

Escobar, FernandoAuthorGomis-Tena, JulioAuthorSaiz, JavierAuthorRomero, LuciaCorresponding Author

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October 11, 2024
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Article

Automatic modeling of dynamic drug-hERG channel interactions using three voltage protocols and machine learning techniques: A simulation study

Publicated to: Computer Methods And Programs In Biomedicine. 226 107148- - 2022-11-01 226(), DOI: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2022.107148

Authors:

Escobar, F; Gomis-Tena, J; Saiz, J; Romero, L
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Affiliations

Univ Politecn Valencia, Ctr Invest & Innovac Bioingeniria, Valencia, Spain - Author
Univ Politecn Valencia, Ctr Invest Innovac Bioingn Ci2B, Camino Vera s-n, Valencia 46022, Spain - Author

Abstract

Background: Assessment of drug cardiac safety is critical in the development of new compounds and is commonly addressed by evaluating the half-maximal blocking concentration of the potassium human ether-a-go-go related gene (hERG) channels. However, recent works have evidenced that the modelling of drug-binding dynamics to hERG can help to improve early cardiac safety assessment. Our goal is to de-velop a methodology to automatically generate Markovian models of the drug-hERG channel interactions. Methods: The training and the test sets consisted of 20800 and 5200 virtual drugs, respectively, dis-tributed into 104 groups with different affinities and kinetics to the conformational states of the chan-nel. In our system, drugs may bind to any state (individually or simultaneously), with different degrees of preference for a conformational state and the change of the conformational state of the drug bound channels may be restricted or allowed. To model such a wide range of possibilities, 12 Markovian chains are considered. Our approach uses the response of the drugs to our three previously developed voltage clamp protocols, which enhance the differences in the probabilities of occupying a certain conformational state of the channel (open, closed and inactivated). The computing tool is comprised of a classifier and a parameter optimizer and uses linear interpolation, support vector machines and a simplex method for function minimization.Results: We propose a novel methodology that automatically generates dynamic drug models using Markov model formulations and that elucidates the states where the drug binds and unbinds and the preferential binding state using data obtained from simple voltage clamp protocols that captures the preferential state-dependent binding properties, the relative affinities, trapping and non-trapping dynam-ics and the onset of IKr block. Overall, the tool correctly predicted the class of 92.04% of the drugs and the model provided by the tool accurately fitted the response of the target compound, the mean accu-racy being 97.53%. Moreover, generation of the dynamic model of an IKr blocker from its response to our voltage clamp protocols usually takes less than an hour on a common desktop computer.Conclusion: Our methodology could be very useful to model and simulate dynamic drug-hERG channel interactions. It would contribute to the improvement of the preclinical assessment of the proarrhythmic risk of drugs that inhibit IKr and the efficacy of antiarrhythmic IKr blockers.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )
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Keywords

AffinitAnti-arrhythmia agentsBindingBlockadeDrug modelingErg1 potassium channelHeartHerg blockerHumansI kr blockerI(kr) blockerIn-silico modelIon channelsKineticsMachine learninMachine learningMolecular determinantsPotassium channelPotassium channel blockersState

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Computer Methods And Programs In Biomedicine due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency WoS (JCR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2022, it was in position 15/111, thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Computer Science, Theory & Methods.

Independientemente del impacto esperado determinado por el canal de difusión, es importante destacar el impacto real observado de la propia aportación.

Según las diferentes agencias de indexación, el número de citas acumuladas por esta publicación hasta la fecha 2026-01-20:

  • WoS: 6
  • Scopus: 7
  • Europe PMC: 4
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Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2026-01-20:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 13.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 13 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 4.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 1 (Altmetric).

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.
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Leadership analysis of institutional authors

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: First Author (Escobar Ropero, Fernando) and Last Author (Romero Pérez, Lucia).

the author responsible for correspondence tasks has been Romero Pérez, Lucia.

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Awards linked to the item

This work was the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades [grant "Formacion de Profesorado Universitario" FPU19/02200; grant PID2019-104356RB-C41 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110 0 011033 ]; the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program [grant agreement No 101016496 (SimCardioTest)]; and the Direccion General de Politica Cientifica de la Generalitat Valenciana [grant PROMETEO/2020/043]. Patenting of the proposed system/software is under consideration.
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