Abstract
Background: Spleen tyrosine kinase (SYK) is a protein related to various diseases. Aberrant SYK expression often causes the progression and initiation of several diseases including cancer and autoimmune diseases. Despite the importance of inhibiting SYK and identifying candidate inhibitors, no clinically effective inhibitors have been reported to date. Therefore, there is a need for novel SYK inhibitors. Results: Candidate compounds were investigated using in silico screening by chooseLD, which simulates ligand docking to proteins. Using this system, known inhibitors were correctly recognized as compounds with high affinity to SYK. Furthermore, many compounds in the DrugBank database were newly identified as having high affinity to the ATP-binding sites in the kinase domain with a similar affinity to previously reported inhibitors. Conclusions: Many drug candidate compounds from the DrugBank database were newly identified as inhibitors of SYK. Because compounds registered in the DrugBank are expected to have fewer side effects than currently available compounds, these newly identified compounds may be clinically useful inhibitors of SYK for the treatment of various diseases.
