TY - JOUR TI - Inhibition of mutant RAS-RAF interaction by mimicking structural and dynamic properties of phosphorylated RAS AU - Ilter, Metehan AU - Kasmer, Ramazan AU - Jalalypour, Farzaneh AU - Atilgan, Canan AU - Topcu, Ozan AU - Karakas, Nihal AU - Sensoy, Ozge A2 - Cui, Qiang A2 - Cooper, Jonathan A A2 - Sugita, Yuji VL - 11 PY - 2022 DA - 2022/12/02 SP - e79747 C1 - eLife 2022;11:e79747 DO - 10.7554/eLife.79747 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79747 AB - Undruggability of RAS proteins has necessitated alternative strategies for the development of effective inhibitors. In this respect, phosphorylation has recently come into prominence as this reversible post-translational modification attenuates sensitivity of RAS towards RAF. As such, in this study, we set out to unveil the impact of phosphorylation on dynamics of HRASWT and aim to invoke similar behavior in HRASG12D mutant by means of small therapeutic molecules. To this end, we performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using phosphorylated HRAS and showed that phosphorylation of Y32 distorted Switch I, hence the RAS/RAF interface. Consequently, we targeted Switch I in HRASG12D by means of approved therapeutic molecules and showed that the ligands enabled detachment of Switch I from the nucleotide-binding pocket. Moreover, we demonstrated that displacement of Switch I from the nucleotide-binding pocket was energetically more favorable in the presence of the ligand. Importantly, we verified computational findings in vitro where HRASG12D/RAF interaction was prevented by the ligand in HEK293T cells that expressed HRASG12D mutant protein. Therefore, these findings suggest that targeting Switch I, hence making Y32 accessible might open up new avenues in future drug discovery strategies that target mutant RAS proteins. KW - hek-293t -hras-wt KW - eukaryotic expression plasmid KW - hek-293t -hras-g12d JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -