Identification of compounds with binding affinity to proteins via magnetization transfer from bulk water.

A powerful screening by NMR methodology (WaterLOGSY), based on transfer of magnetization from bulk water, for the identification of compounds that interact with target biomolecules (proteins, RNA and DNA fragments) is described. The method exploits efficiently the large reservoir of H2O magnetization. The high sensitivity of the technique reduces the amount of biomolecule and ligands needed for the screening, which constitutes an important requirement for high throughput screening by NMR of large libraries of compounds. Application of the method to a compound mixture against the cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (cdk2) protein is presented.