Finding inhibitors of protein-protein interactions (i-PPIs): a support from bioinformatics

Finding drugs with traditional approaches is becoming more and more difficult especially for the need of finding targets different from the traditional ones, to cope unmet clinical needs. However, the increasing amount of knowledge about cross-talks between proteins in the cell has prompted researchers to extend the range of “druggable” targets to include protein-protein interactions. Disruptors of protein complexes appear as a new paradigm in the field of drug discovery and development. This approach has long been considered as extremely challenging, and to date, only few successes were achieved with some molecules modulating protein-protein interactions that are currently on the market. Nevertheless, the number of inhibitors of protein-protein interactions in pre-clinical and clinical trials is increasing and this is encouraging for the future. Bioinformatics represents a valid support for scientists, and several tools and software are available practically for every field of research. This paper reviews those bioinformatics tools to support people in developing drug-like molecules to target protein-protein interactions, at all levels of this process.