We validated the combined pharmacophore approach by an array of methods including, (1) quantifying the anti-tumor cell potency of in silico identified compounds with cultured human GBM cell lines, (2) demonstrating that cell lines expressing OLIG2 showed a relatively much greater susceptibility to the OLIG2 inhibitor, and (3) showing selective inhibition of OLIG2 by measuring OLIG2 target gene effects by quantitative RT-PCR, reporter assays, a thermal shift assay, and EMSA. Here, OLIG2 is linked to neoplasm.