Icon representing a puzzle

2688: Revisiting CCHFV Round 9

Closed since 4 months ago

Intermediate Overall Small Molecule Design

Summary


Created
November 14, 2025
Expires
Max points
100
Description

The Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) is a life-threatening zoonotic disease caused by a tick-borne virus. Recent research has revealed the significant role of the viral-encoded Ovarian Tumor (OTU) deubiquitinase in the CCHFV replication process. Based on the most promising compounds, this puzzle will focus on getting an inhibitor for this protein. As the CCHFV-OTU protease interacts with another protein (ubiquitin), the interaction surface is quite large and superficial, making it a challenging binding pocket. For this round we will be focusing on the lower binding pocket. For more details check out the Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever blog post.

Note: For this puzzle, we have removed the sulfonate bonus found in previous iterations and instead award points only for the tetrazoles, as they have shown slightly higher binding affinities in testing.

Top groups


  1. Avatar for Contenders 100 pts. 25,658
  2. Avatar for Go Science 2. Go Science 65 pts. 25,264
  3. Avatar for Anthropic Dreams 3. Anthropic Dreams 41 pts. 25,227
  4. Avatar for VeFold 4. VeFold 24 pts. 24,438
  5. Avatar for Australia 5. Australia 14 pts. 24,158
  6. Avatar for L'Alliance Francophone 6. L'Alliance Francophone 7 pts. 23,596
  7. Avatar for FamilyBarmettler 7. FamilyBarmettler 4 pts. 23,061
  8. Avatar for Marvin's bunch 8. Marvin's bunch 2 pts. 22,913
  9. Avatar for Team China 9. Team China 1 pt. 22,848
  10. Avatar for Bioqué? 10. Bioqué? 1 pt. 22,726

  1. Avatar for AlkiP0Ps 11. AlkiP0Ps Lv 1 46 pts. 24,158
  2. Avatar for spvincent 12. spvincent Lv 1 42 pts. 24,143
  3. Avatar for dcrwheeler 13. dcrwheeler Lv 1 39 pts. 23,953
  4. Avatar for SemperRabbit 14. SemperRabbit Lv 1 36 pts. 23,877
  5. Avatar for Anfinsen_slept_here 15. Anfinsen_slept_here Lv 1 33 pts. 23,643
  6. Avatar for Galaxie 16. Galaxie Lv 1 30 pts. 23,635
  7. Avatar for ichwilldiesennamen 17. ichwilldiesennamen Lv 1 27 pts. 23,634
  8. Avatar for zxspectrum 18. zxspectrum Lv 1 25 pts. 23,618
  9. Avatar for nicobul 19. nicobul Lv 1 23 pts. 23,596
  10. Avatar for zbp 20. zbp Lv 1 20 pts. 23,593

Comments


Sciren Staff Lv 1

Objectives

Maximum bonus: +7750

Torsion Quality (max +1000)
Keeps bond rotations in a good range. Using Wiggle or Tweak Ligand can fix bad torsions. (Show highlights torsions to be rotated.)

Number of Rotatable Bonds (max +1000)
Intended to keep the ligand from getting too big and floppy. You can reduce rotatable bonds by deleting groups or forming rings. (Show highlights rotatable bonds.)

Ligand TPSA (max +1000)
Topological Polar Surface Area - Keeps the polar surface area (including buried polar surface) low. To improve, try removing oxygens and nitrogens. (Show highlights atoms contributing to higher TPSA.)

Ligand cLogP (max +1000)
A measure of polarity - Keeps the molecule from getting too hydrophobic. To improve, try adding polar oxygens and nitrogens. (Show highlights atoms contributing to higher cLogP.)

Bad Groups (max +1000)
Gives a bonus for avoiding groups that interfere with assays, which are far from the compounds in the library, or which otherwise have issues. (Show highlights groups at issue.)

Good Groups (max +1000)
Gives a bonus if the molecule contains a tetrazole group. A previous study has shown that molecules containing this group exhibit better affinities, due to their binding to the protein, as illustrated in the following pictures.

Tetrazole

Molecular Weight (max +1000)
Keeps the ligand within a reasonable size limit.

Synthetic Accessibility (max +750)
Keeps the ligand from going too far from the compounds in the library. (Show highlights parts of the molecule at issue.)