MGDB: a curated database for molecular glues

Nucleic Acids Res. 2025 Nov 6:gkaf1131. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkaf1131. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Molecular glues (MGs) represent a unique class of small molecules that modulate protein-protein interactions by altering target protein surface properties, enabling targeted degradation, pathway modulation, or functional control of proteins, including traditionally undruggable targets. Currently, 17 MG-based drugs are approved globally with over 40 in clinical trials, underscoring their therapeutic potential. Despite these advances, the lack of a dedicated database integrating structural, pharmacological, and computational data for such compounds hinders rational drug design. To address this gap, we developed MGDB, a specialized open-access repository integrating rigorously curated multidimensional data for MGs. MGDB contains 7396 curated MGs being sourced from 162 peer-reviewed publications and 156 patents. It consolidates structural data, 9728 experimental bioactivity data points (covering degradation efficiency, binding affinity, cellular/animal activity) across 201 targets and 108 effectors, 115 296 computed physicochemical properties, and 270 785 ADMET profiles. The database supports text-based and chemical structure-based queries and interoperability with external resources (e.g. PubChem, ChEMBL, DrugBank, UniProt, and WIPO) via hyperlinks. By centralizing and standardizing specialized MG information, MGDB empowers researchers to rapidly explore MG research landscapes and provides high-quality datasets for artificial intelligence-driven rational therapeutic design. MGDB is freely available at http://mgdb.idruglab.cn/.

PMID:41206475 | DOI:10.1093/nar/gkaf1131