Small-Molecule Inhibitors: Disrupting enzyme fluidity
A combination of X-ray crystallography, NMR, and mass spectrometry has revealed how diverse small-molecule inhibitors bind Bruton’s tyrosine kinase and alter the conformation of this enzyme.
- Department of Chemistry and Huck Institute of Life Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, United States
The switching of enzymes between active and inactive states, a process known as enzyme regulation, is crucial in cell biology, and the breakdown of the process has been implicated in many diseases. A number of small-molecule inhibitors work by blocking enzyme function, but efforts to evaluate the efficacy of such inhibitors have been hampered by the lack of a detailed understanding of how they work. For example, some small-molecule inhibitors work by making localized changes to the shape of the enzyme at the site where they bind, whereas others work by inducing changes in another part of the enzyme, a phenomenon known as allostery.
A clearer picture of allostery requires detailed knowledge of enzyme function and the underlying protein dynamics (Henzler-Wildman and Kern, 2007). Now, in eLife, Amy Andreotti (Iowa State University), Thomas Wales (Northeastern University) and colleagues – Raji Joseph, Neha Amatya, Bruce Fulton and John Engen – report on the effects of five different small-molecule inhibitors on an enzyme called Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK; Joseph et al., 2020).
BTK is a kinase that regulates the immune responses of B- and T-cells, and blocking its activity can help suppress inflammatory responses and treat lymphomas and leukemias (Kim, 2019). High-resolution snapshots of the active and inactive states of BTK have been previously obtained using X-ray crystallography (Marcotte et al., 2010; Kuglstatter et al., 2011; Xing and Huang, 2014). Similar to other kinases, an important feature in BTK is a switch called a ‘Glu-Lys switch’ (Taylor et al., 1993). When the critical glutamate (Glu) in the switch is positioned close to a specific lysine (Lys) in the catalytic site, the enzyme is more active. When the enzyme is inactive, it adopts a different shape where the same glutamate is further from the lysine.
While X-ray crystallography can provide information on the active and inactive conformations of enzymes at high resolution, additional techniques are needed to understand how enzymes and small-molecule inhibitors interact in solution, so Joseph et al. combined X-ray crystallography with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and amide hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDXMS). NMR provides a global overview of conformation, including the transitions between the active and inactive state, while HDXMS localizes conformational changes at a peptide level.
The experiments revealed that BTK exists in an ensemble of conformations, encompassing the inactive and active states of the enzyme (Figure 1). Joseph et al. then explored how five different small-molecule inhibitors (ibrutinib, dasatinib, GDC-0853, CGI1746 and CC-292) interacted with BTK, and found that each inhibitor resulted in varying ratios of inactive and active conformations. These results establish that BTK changes the likelihood of being in a specific conformation within its ensemble, rather than operating as a discrete on/off switch, which is consistent with the idea that proteins exist in several conformations of varying activity (Onuchic and Wolynes, 2004). This work also supports the view that small-molecule inhibitors may favor certain conformations in an ensemble over others (Boehr et al., 2009; Kar et al., 2010). Joseph et al. also examined a mutation in BTK that confers B-cells with resistance to one of the inhibitors: the cancer drug ibrutinib. They found that this mutation disrupts the inactive conformation of BTK, making the enzyme more active and leading to more aggressive lymphomas that can evade the drug.
Figure 1
Active and inactive forms of the enzyme BTK.
(A) Top: In solution BTK populates an ensemble of inactive (left), intermediate (middle) and active (right) conformations. These schematics show the regulatory domain (red), the catalytic domain (blue or green) and activation loop (red or yellow). Activation involves the regulatory domain moving away from the catalytic domain, and the activation loop moving away from the Glu-Lys switch (not shown) in the catalytic domain. Bottom: Structure of the catalytic domain in the inactive (blue, left) and active (green, right) conformations showing the Glu-Lys switch turned away in the inactive state and positionally close together in the active states (Marcotte et al., 2010). These structures of inactive (PDB ID: 3GEN) and active (PDB ID: 3K54) BTK were rendered using the PyMOL Molecular Graphics System, Version 2.0 Schrödinger, LLC. (B) The effect of a small-molecule inhibitor on an enzyme can be visualized in terms of the way it changes the free energy of an ensemble of interchangeable conformational states of the enzyme. In the absence of the small-molecule inhibitors, the free energy (vertical axis) is different for each of the individual conformations (horizontal axis); the lower the free energy, the more likely the enzyme is likely to exist in that conformation. In this example, small-molecule inhibitor 1 (blue) lowers the free energy to the right of the graph, favoring these specific conformations, whereas small-molecule inhibitor 2 (green) lowers the free energy to the left of the graph, favoring those specific conformations. Mutations in the enzyme can also change the free energy to favor certain conformations. Knowing how different small molecules influence the free energy of the enzyme could help develop new small-molecule inhibitors.
This work underscores the limitations of using structural snapshots from X-ray crystallography or cryo-electron microscopy alone to map small-molecule interaction sites, or to describe allosteric effects. It also highlights how combining NMR and HDXMS with static structural data will lead to more complete descriptions of drug-enzyme interactions. More generally, combining structural, dynamic and computational approaches will help researchers to design inhibitor drugs that are not rendered ineffective by disease-resistant mutations.
References
-
The role of dynamic conformational ensembles in biomolecular recognitionNature Chemical Biology 5:789–796.https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.232
-
Allostery and population shift in drug discoveryCurrent Opinion in Pharmacology 10:715–722.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coph.2010.09.002
-
Development of BTK inhibitors for the treatment of B-cell malignanciesArchives of Pharmacal Research 42:171–181.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12272-019-01124-1
-
Theory of protein foldingCurrent Opinion in Structural Biology 14:70–75.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbi.2004.01.009
-
cAMP-dependent protein kinase defines a family of enzymesPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 340:315–324.https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1993.0073
-
Bruton's TK inhibitors: structural insights and evolution of clinical candidatesFuture Medicinal Chemistry 6:675–695.https://doi.org/10.4155/fmc.14.24
Article and author information
Author details
Ganesh Srinivasan Anand
Publication history
- Version of Record published: January 25, 2021 (version 1)
Copyright
© 2021, Anand
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 723
- Page views
-
- 69
- Downloads
-
- 0
- Citations
Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: Crossref, PubMed Central, Scopus.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Small-Molecule Inhibitors: Disrupting enzyme fluidity
eLife 10:e65221.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65221
Further reading
-
- Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
A central regulatory mechanism of iron homeostasis in humans involves ferroportin (FPN), the sole cellular iron exporter, and the peptide hormone hepcidin, which inhibits Fe2+ transport and induces internalization and degradation of FPN. Dysregulation of the FPN/hepcidin axis leads to diverse pathological conditions, and consequently, pharmacological compounds that inhibit FPN-mediated iron transport are of high clinical interest. Here, we describe the cryo-electron microscopy structures of human FPN in complex with synthetic nanobodies and vamifeport (VIT-2763), the first clinical-stage oral FPN inhibitor. Vamifeport competes with hepcidin for FPN binding and is currently in clinical development for β-thalassemia and sickle cell disease. The structures display two distinct conformations of FPN, representing outward-facing and occluded states of the transporter. The vamifeport site is located in the center of the protein, where the overlap with hepcidin interactions underlies the competitive relationship between the two molecules. The introduction of point mutations in the binding pocket of vamifeport reduces its affinity to FPN, emphasizing the relevance of the structural data. Together, our study reveals conformational rearrangements of FPN that are of potential relevance for transport, and it provides initial insight into the pharmacological targeting of this unique iron efflux transporter.
-
- Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
P2X receptor channels are trimeric ATP-activated ion channels expressed in neuronal and non-neuronal cells that are attractive therapeutic targets for human disorders. Seven subtypes of P2X receptor channels have been identified in mammals that can form both homomeric and heteromeric channels. P2X1–4 and P2X7 receptor channels are cation-selective, whereas P2X5 has been reported to have both cation and anion permeability. P2X receptor channel structures reveal that each subunit is comprised of two transmembrane helices, with both N-and C-termini on the intracellular side of the membrane and a large extracellular domain that contains the ATP binding sites at subunit interfaces. Recent structures of ATP-bound P2X receptors with the activation gate open reveal the unanticipated presence of a cytoplasmic cap over the central ion permeation pathway, leaving lateral fenestrations that may be largely buried within the membrane as potential pathways for ions to permeate the intracellular end of the pore. In the present study, we identify a critical residue within the intracellular lateral fenestrations that is readily accessible to thiol-reactive compounds from both sides of the membrane and where substitutions influence the relative permeability of the channel to cations and anions. Taken together, our results demonstrate that ions can enter or exit the internal pore through lateral fenestrations that play a critical role in determining the ion selectivity of P2X receptor channels.
