Occurrence of selected linker motifs in the Maple database of published degrader structures. Wavy lines indicate attachment to other linker motifs, protein-binding ligands, or connecting functional groups. Since many PROTACs combine more than one structural motifs into their linkers therefore these percentages sum to more than 100
Structure
Linker motif
Occurrence in Maple Database structures (%)
PEG
54
Alkyl
31
Other Glycol
14
Alkyne
7
Triazole
6
Piperazine
4
Piperidine
4
Declarations
Author contributions
All authors contributed to the conception and organisation of this review. RT prepared the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors contributed to the writing and development of additional sections. All authors contributed to manuscript revision and approved the submitted version.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Ethical approval
Not applicable.
Consent to participate
Not applicable.
Consent to publication
Not applicable.
Availability of data and materials
Not applicable.
Funding
This work was supported by AstraZeneca with a CASE award, and the EPSRC with a CASE Conversion grant (EP/R513325/1). AstraZeneca approved the final submitted version of the manuscript. The industrial supervisor/author (CF), together with the other authors, contributed to the design, writing, proof-reading and submission of this review.
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