Funding Acknowledgment: The SGC is a registered charity (number 1097737) that receives funds from AbbVie, Bayer Pharma AG, Boehringer Ingelheim, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Eshelman Institute for Innovation, Genome Canada through Ontario Genomics Institute [OGI-055], Innovative Medicines Initiative (EU/EFPIA) [ULTRA-DD grant no. 115766], Janssen, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, MSD, Novartis Pharma AG, Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Science (MRIS), Pfizer, São Paulo Research Foundation-FAPESP, Takeda, and Wellcome.

My goal is to test whether retrospective virtual screening approaches can guide the design of PROTACs. As a first step, I showed that HADDOCK was the best protein-protein docking tool among those I tested to predict how E3 ligases interact with their protein substrates. Here, I ask whether docking virtual libraries of PROTAC candidates to these E3 ligase – substrate protein interfaces can be used to predict which PROTACs are active.