RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 A Structural and Functional View of Polypharmacology JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 044289 DO 10.1101/044289 A1 Aurelio A. Moya-Garcia A1 Natalie L. Dawson A1 Felix A. Kruger A1 John P. Overington A1 Christine Orengo A1 Juan A.G. Ranea YR 2016 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/03/18/044289.abstract AB The similarity property principle states that similar compounds have similar properties. In this study, we demonstrate that validity this principle holds well when the drug targets are protein domains. We leverage the similarity property principle to explore the druggability of CATH-FunFams, a type of protein domain and we use the associations between drugs and CATH-FunFams to explore drug polypharmacology by considering how the drugs’ pharmacological effects arise from the molecular targets they interact with. Our results demonstrate that drug protein interactions are mediated by drug-domain interactions and that CATH-FunFams provide a reasonable annotation level for drug-target interactions, opening a new research direction in target identification.Author Summary Similar drugs tend to target the same proteins and therefore tend to have the same biological action. In this work we assess this general trend, the Similarity Property Principle, and use it to investigate the potential of CATH Functional Families, a structurally and functionally coherent protein domain definition, as drug targets. We show that the interactions between drugs and their targets are mediated by these Functional Families, and that they provide a useful mean to identify new drug targets.