Oncology Innovative Medicines Unit, AstraZeneca, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.
Discovery Sciences, AstraZeneca, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK.
Nat Chem Biol. 2016 Nov;12(11):931-936. doi: 10.1038/nchembio.2174. Epub 2016 Sep 5.
Targeted covalent inhibition of disease-associated proteins has become a powerful methodology in the field of drug discovery, leading to the approval of new therapeutics. Nevertheless, current approaches are often limited owing to their reliance on a cysteine residue to generate the covalent linkage. Here we used aryl boronic acid carbonyl warheads to covalently target a noncatalytic lysine side chain, and generated to our knowledge the first reversible covalent inhibitors for Mcl-1, a protein-protein interaction (PPI) target that has proven difficult to inhibit via traditional medicinal chemistry strategies. These covalent binders exhibited improved potency in comparison to noncovalent congeners, as demonstrated in biochemical and cell-based assays. We identified Lys234 as the residue involved in covalent modification, via point mutation. The covalent binders discovered in this study will serve as useful starting points for the development of Mcl-1 therapeutics and probes to interrogate Mcl-1-dependent biological phenomena.
靶向与疾病相关的蛋白质的共价抑制已成为药物发现领域的一种强大方法,导致新疗法的批准。然而,目前的方法通常受到限制,因为它们依赖于半胱氨酸残基来产生共价键。在这里,我们使用芳基硼酸羰基弹头来共价靶向非催化赖氨酸侧链,并生成了我们所知的第一个针对 Mcl-1 的可逆共价抑制剂,Mcl-1 是一种蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用(PPI)靶标,通过传统的药物化学策略很难抑制。这些共价结合物在生化和基于细胞的测定中表现出比非共价同系物更高的效力。我们通过点突变确定 Lys234 是参与共价修饰的残基。本研究中发现的共价结合物将作为开发 Mcl-1 治疗剂和探针以研究 Mcl-1 依赖性生物学现象的有用起点。