GPU-Accelerated Drug Discovery with Docking on the Summit Supercomputer
Scott LeGrand, Aaron Scheinberg, Andreas F. Tillack, Mathialakan Thavappiragasam, Josh V. Vermaas, Rupesh Agarwal, Jeff Larkin, Duncan Poole, Diogo Santos‐Martins, Leonardo Solis-Vasquez, Andreas Koch, Stefano Forli, Óscar Hernández, Jeremy C. Smith, Ada Sedova
Abstract
Protein-ligand docking is an in silico tool used to screen potential drug compounds for their ability to bind to a given protein receptor within a drug-discovery campaign. Experimental drug screening is expensive and time consuming, and it is desirable to carry out large scale docking calculations in a high-throughput manner to narrow the experimental search space. Few of the existing computational docking tools were designed with high performance computing in mind. Therefore, optimizations to maximize use of high-performance computational resources available at leadership-class computing facilities enables these facilities to be leveraged for drug discovery. Here we present the porting, optimization, and validation of the AutoDock-GPU program for the Summit supercomputer, and its application to initial compound screening efforts to target proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the current COVID-19 pandemic.