Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 16, Issue 13, 2016

The PI3K signaling cascade is the key moderator of cell proliferation, survival, motility, and apoptosis. Class I PI3K proteins are well characterized and linked to thrombosis (PI3Kβ), rheumatoid arthritis (PI3Kδ), and cancer (PI3Kα). In this review, we explore the latest progress in the design and development of selective Class I PI3K inhibitors from the perspective of drug design and structure activity relationships.

One of the greatest challenges in fighting cancer is cell targeting and biomarker selection. The Atypical Chemokine Receptor ACKR3/CXCR7 is expressed on many cancer cell types, including breast cancer and glioblastoma, and binds the endogenous ligands SDF1/CXCL12 and ITAC/CXCL11. A 20 amino acid region of the ACKR3/CXCR7 N-terminus was synthesized and targeted with the NEB PhD™-7 Phage Display Peptide Library. Twenty-nine phages were isolated and heptapeptide inserts sequenced; of these, 23 sequences were unique. A 3D molecular model was created for the ACKR3/CXCR7 N-terminus by mutating the corresponding region of the crystal structure of CXCR4 with bound SDF1/CXCL12. A ClustalW alignment was performed on each peptide sequence using the entire SDF1/CXCL12 sequence as the template. The 23-peptide sequences showed similarity to three distinct regions of the SDF1/CXCL12 molecule. A 3D molecular model was made for each of the phage peptide inserts to visually identify potential areas of steric interference of peptides that simulated CXCL12 regions not in contact with the receptor’s Nterminus. An ELISA analysis of the relative binding affinity between the peptides identified 9 peptides with statistically significant results. The candidate pool of 9 peptides was further reduced to 3 peptides based on their affinity for the targeted N-terminus region peptide versus no target peptide present or a scrambled negative control peptide. The results clearly show the Phage Display protocol can be used to target a synthesized region of the ACKR3/CXCR7 N-terminus. The 3 peptides chosen, P20, P3, and P9, will be the basis for further targeting studies.

Under physiological conditions, CXCL12 modulates cell proliferation, survival, angiogenesis, and migration mainly through CXCR4. Interestingly, the newly discovered receptor CXCR7 for CXCL12 is highly expressed in many tumor cells as well as tumor-associated blood vessels, although the level of CXCR7 in normal blood cells is low. Recently, many studies have suggested that CXCR7 promotes cell growth and metastasis in various cancers, including lymphoma and leukemia, hepatocecullar, ovarian, colorectal, breast and lung cancer. Compared to CXCR4, CXCR7 is a non-classical GPCR that is unable to activate G proteins. The function of CXCR7 is generally considered to be mediated by: (a) recruiting β-arrestin-2; (b) heterodimerizing with CXCR4; and (c) acting as a “scavenger” of CXCL12, thus lowering the level of CXCL12 to weaken the activity of CXCR4. However, the crosstalk between CXCL12/CXCR7/CXCR4 and other signaling pathways (such as the p38 MAPK pathway, the PI3K/mTOR pathway, the STAT3 signaling, and metalloproteinases MMP-9 and MMP-2) is more complicated. The function of CXCR7 is also involved in modulating tumor microenvironment, tumor cell migration and apoptosis. Understanding these complex interactions will provide insight in drug design targeting the CXCR7 as potential anticancer therapy.

Receptor Tyrosine Kinases (RTKs) are essential components for regulating cell-cell signaling and communication events in cell growth, proliferation, differentiation, survival and metabolism. Deregulation of RTKs and their associated signaling pathways can lead to a wide variety of human diseases such as immunodeficiency, diabetes, arterosclerosis, psoriasis and cancer. Thus RTKs have become one of the most important drug targets families in recent decade. Pharmaceutical companies have dedicated their research efforts towards the discovery of small-molecule inhibitors of RTKs, many of which had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) or are currently in clinical trials. The great successes in the development of small-molecule inhibitors of RTKs are largely attributed to the use of modern cheminformatic approaches to identifying lead scaffolds. Those include the quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) modeling, as well as the structure-, and ligand-based pharmacophore modeling techniques in this case. Herein we inspected the literature thoroughly in an effort to conduct a comparative analysis of major findings regarding the essential structure-activity relationships (SARs)/pharmacophore features of known active RTK inhibitors, most of which were collected from cheminformatic modeling approaches.

Receptor-based 3D-QSAR strategy represents a superior integration of structure-based drug design (SBDD) and three-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationship (3D-QSAR) analysis. It combines the accurate prediction of ligand poses by the SBDD approach with the good predictability and interpretability of statistical models derived from the 3D-QSAR approach. Extensive efforts have been devoted to the development of receptor-based 3D-QSAR methods and two alternative approaches have been exploited. One associates with computing the binding interactions between a receptor and a ligand to generate structure-based descriptors for QSAR analyses. The other concerns the application of various docking protocols to generate optimal ligand poses so as to provide reliable molecular alignments for the conventional 3D-QSAR operations. This review highlights new concepts and methodologies recently developed in the field of receptorbased 3D-QSAR, and in particular, covers its application in kinase studies.

Angiogenesis has been identified as a crucial process in the development and spread of cancers. There are many regulators of angiogenesis which are not yet fully understood. Methionine aminiopeptidase is a metalloenzyme with two structurally distinct forms in humans, Type-1 (MetAP-1) and Type-2 (MetAP-2). It has been shown that small molecule inhibitors of MetAP-2 suppress endothelial cell proliferation. The initial discovery by Donald Ingber of MetAP-2 inhibition as a potential target in angiogenesis began with a fortuitous observation similar to the discovery of penicillin activity by Sir Alexander Fleming. From a drug design perspective, MetAP-2 is an attractive target. Fumagillin and ovalicin, known natural products, bind with IC50 values in low nanomolar concentrations. Crystal structures of the bound complexes provide 3-dimensional coordinates for advanced computational studies. More recent discoveries have shown other biological activities for MetAP-2 inhibition, which has generated new interests in the design of novel inhibitors. Semisynthetic fumagillin derivatives such as AGM-1470 (TNP-470) have been shown to have better drug properties, but have not been very successful in clinical trials. The rationale and development of novel multicyclic analogs of fumagillin are reviewed.

G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are membrane proteins coupled with G proteins through which they transmit signals to the cytoplasm. Approximately 30% of pharmaceuticals target these receptors, even though crystal structures were scarce at the time. Furthermore, an additional 15% of GPCRs have yet to be exploited for therapeutic intervention. An overview of structural information is presented, with emphasis on rearrangements occurring during activation,in light of recently resolved activated state crystal structures. Computational efforts over recent years are also highlighted.

There has been a revolution in the development of effective, small-molecule anticoagulants and antiplatelet agents. Numerous trypsin-like serine proteases have been under active pursuit as therapeutic targets. Important examples include thrombin, factor VIIa, factor Xa, and β-tryptase with indications ranging from thrombosis and inflammation to asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Trypsin-like serine proteases exhibit a highly similar tertiary folding pattern, especially for the region near the substrate binding pocket that includes the conserved catalytic triad consisting of histidine 57, aspartic acid 102, and serine 195. A rich collection of X-ray structures for many trypsin-like serine proteases is available, which greatly facilitated the optimization of small organic inhibitors as therapeutic agents. The present review surveyed those inhibitors disclosed in peer-reviewed scientific journals and patent publications with a special focus on structural features and protein-inhibitor interactions that implicated the inhibitor optimization process. The role played by the residue 190 of trypsin-like serine proteases is critical. While many inhibitors without a basic group have progressed into the clinic for ones with alanine 190, the task for those with serine 190 remains extremely challenging, if not impossible. In addition to warfarin, heparin, and low molecular weight heparins (LMWHs), treatment options have expanded with the development and approval of the new oral anticoagulants (NOACs). The NOACs are superior to vitamin K antagonists in terms of rapid onset, pharmacokinetics, drug/food interactions, and regular coagulation monitoring; but one serious drawback is the lack of an effective antidote at this time. Apixaban (Eliquis®), rivaroxaban (Xarelto®), and edoxaban (Savaysa®) are the new Xa inhibitors that have been recently approved by the U.S. FDA and are in current clinical practice. These drugs bind to the active site of factor Xa (fXa) which prevents the conversion of prothrombin to thrombin. In addition, dabigatran etexikate (Pradaxa®), the direct thrombin inhibitor (fIIa) is also now widely prescribed.

Regulation of protein expression by non-coding RNAs typically involves effects on mRNA degradation and/or ribosomal translation. The possibility of virus-host mRNA-mRNA antisense tethering interactions (ATI) as a gain-of-function strategy, via the capture of functional RNA motifs, has not been hitherto considered. We present evidence that ATIs may be exploited by certain RNA viruses in order to tether the mRNAs of host selenoproteins, potentially exploiting the proximity of a captured host selenocysteine insertion sequence (SECIS) element to enable the expression of virally-encoded selenoprotein modules, via translation of in-frame UGA stop codons as selenocysteine. Computational analysis predicts thermodynamically stable ATIs between several widely expressed mammalian selenoprotein mRNAs (e.g., isoforms of thioredoxin reductase) and specific Ebola virus mRNAs, and HIV-1 mRNA, which we demonstrate via DNA gel shift assays. The probable functional significance of these ATIs is further supported by the observation that, in both viruses, they are located in close proximity to highly conserved in-frame UGA stop codons at the 3′ end of open reading frames that encode essential viral proteins (the HIV-1 nef protein and the Ebola nucleoprotein). Significantly, in HIV/AIDS patients, an inverse correlation between serum selenium and mortality has been repeatedly documented, and clinical benefits of selenium in the context of multi-micronutrient supplementation have been demonstrated in several well-controlled clinical trials. Hence, in the light of our findings, the possibility of a similar role for selenium in Ebola pathogenesis and treatment merits serious investigation.