Sunday, June 19, 2022

Nucleophilic covalent ligand discovery for the cysteine redoxome

Fu, L.; Jung, Y.; Tian, C.; Ferreira, R.; He, F.; Yang, J.; Carroll, K. ChemRxiv 2022.

https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/62ab096604a3a9469c48d4ec

The convergence of reactive cysteine-targeted electrophilic fragments and chemoproteomics have dramatically accelerated the discovery of ligandable sites in the proteome. Our genome encodes 214,000 cysteine residues, at least 20% of which are estimated to be redox-active. Oxidation blunts sulfur reactivity toward electrophiles but opens the door to a new class of nucleophilic covalent ligands that target cysteinyl sulfenic acids, which are widespread post-translational modifications. Here we report a quantitative analysis of nucleophilic fragments screened against the human sulfenome. Ligands were discovered for >500 sulfenated cysteines in >400 proteins, including sites not targeted by electrophiles with the same scaffold. Among these were compounds that preferentially react with hepatoma-derived growth factor (HDGF)-related proteins (HRPs) one of which was able to block nuclear transport of this oncoprotein. Nucleophilic fragments provide a rich resource for chemical biology and drug discovery, where ligandability in the human proteome extends beyond protein thiols.



Use of new approach methodology for hepatic safety assessment of covalent inhibitor drug candidates

Sara Amberntsson, Alison J Foster, Bhavik Chouhan, Stephen Wilkinson, Stephanie Harlfinger, Graham Smith, Jason G Kettle, Michael Niedbala, ...