A human metabolic map of pharmacological perturbations reveals drug modes of action

Understanding a small molecule’s mode of action (MoA) is essential to guide the selection, optimization and clinical development of lead compounds. In this study, we used high-throughput non-targeted metabolomics to profile changes in 2,269 putative metabolites induced by 1,520 drugs in A549 lung cancer cells. Although only 26% of the drugs inhibited cell growth, 86% caused intracellular metabolic changes, which were largely conserved in two additional cancer cell lines. By testing more than 3.4 million drug–metabolite dependencies, we generated a lookup table of drug interference with metabolism, enabling high-throughput characterization of compounds across drug therapeutic classes in a single-pass screen. The identified metabolic changes revealed previously unknown effects of drugs, expanding their MoA annotations and potential therapeutic applications. We confirmed metabolome-based predictions for four new glucocorticoid receptor agonists, two unconventional 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA (HMGCR) inhibitors and two dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH) inhibitors. Furthermore, we demonstrated that metabolome profiling complements other phenotypic and molecular profiling technologies, opening opportunities to increase the efficiency, scale and accuracy of preclinical drug discovery.