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Tag: Guo

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Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 9893 doi:10.1038/srep09893

A novel caspase 8 selective small molecule potentiates TRAIL-induced cell death

Octavian Bucur, Gabriel Gaidos, Achani Yatawara, Bodvael Pennarun, Chamila Rupasinghe, Jérémie Roux, Stefan Andrei, Bingqian Guo, Alexandra Panaitiu, Maria Pellegrini, Dale F. Mierke & Roya Khosravi-Far

CasPro

Recombinant soluble TRAIL and agonistic antibodies against TRAIL receptors (DR4 and DR5) are currently being created for clinical cancer therapy, due to their selective killing of cancer cells and high safety characteristics. However, resistance to TRAIL and other targeted therapies is an important issue facing current cancer research field. An attractive strategy to sensitize resistant malignancies to TRAIL-induced cell death is the design of small molecules that target and promote caspase 8 activation. For the first time, we describe the discovery and characterization of a small molecule that directly binds caspase 8 and enhances its activation when combined with TRAIL, but not alone. The molecule was identified through an in silico chemical screen for compounds with affinity for the caspase 8 homodimer’s interface. The compound was experimentally validated to directly bind caspase 8, and to promote caspase 8 activation and cell death in single living cells or population of cells, upon TRAIL stimulation. Our approach is a proof-of-concept strategy leading to the discovery of a novel small molecule that not only stimulates TRAIL-induced apoptosis in cancer cells, but may also provide insights into the structure-function relationship of caspase 8 homodimers as putative targets in cancer.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150511/srep09893/full/srep09893.html

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Biochemistry. 2014  Nov 4;53(43):6776-85. doi: 10.1021/bi500861x. Epub 2014 Oct 23

Protein Engineering of the N-terminus of NEMO: structure stabilization and rescue of IKKβ binding.

Abstract

NEMO is a scaffolding protein that, together with the catalytic subunits IKKα and IKKβ, plays an essential role in the formation of the IKK complex and in the activation of the canonical NF-ĸB pathway. Rational drug design targeting the IKK binding site on NEMO would benefit from structural insight, but to date the structure determination of unliganded NEMO has been hindered by protein size and conformational heterogeneity. Here we show how the utilization of a homodimeric coiled-coil adaptor sequence stabilizes the minimal IKK binding domain NEMO(44-111) and furthers our understanding of the structural requirements for IKK binding. The engineered constructs incorporating the coiled-coil at the N-terminus, C-terminus or both ends of NEMO(44-111) present high thermal stability and cooperative melting, and most importantly restore IKKß binding affinity. We examined the consequences on structural content and stability by circular dichoism and nuclear magnetic resonance and measured binding affinity of each construct for IKKβ(701-745) in a fluorescence anisotropy binding assay, allowing us to correlate structural characteristics and stability to binding affinity. Our results provide a method to engineer short stable NEMO constructs to be suitable for structural characterization by NMR or X-ray crystallography. Meanwhile the rescuing of the binding affinity implies that a pre-ordered IKK-binding region of NEMO is compatible with IKK binding and the conformational heterogeneity observed in NEMO(44-111) may be an artifact of the truncation.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25286246

C-terminal coiled-coil adaptor fused to NEMO
C-terminal coiled-coil adaptor fused to NEMO

 

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ATP_paper_artChem Commun (Camb). 2014 Sep 16;50(81):12037-9. doi: 10.1039/c4cc04399e.

Monitoring ATP hydrolysis and ATPase inhibitor screening using (1)H NMR.

Abstract

We present a versatile method to characterize ATPase and kinase activities and discover new inhibitors of these proteins. The proton NMR-based assay directly monitors ATP turnover and is easy to implement, requires no additional reagents and can potentially be applied to GTP. We validated the method's accuracy, applied it to the monitoring of ATP turnover by actin and to the screening of ATPase inhibitors, and showed that it is also applicable for the monitoring of GTP hydrolysis.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25170530