Angewandte
Chemie
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201108118
Inhibitors
Discovery of Macrocyclic Peptides Armed with a Mechanism-Based
Warhead: Isoform-Selective Inhibition of Human Deacetylase
SIRT2**
Jumpei Morimoto, Yuuki Hayashi, and Hiroaki Suga*
Mass screening of available compound libraries by means of
in vitro or cell-based assays is the most prevalent approach for
the discovery of enzyme inhibitors. The major drawback of
this approach is generally a poor cost–performance ratio,
often giving many false-positive hits and therefore requiring
extensive reevaluations of the hits to identify true inhibitors.
Enzyme-mechanism-based drug design is an alternative
approach,[1–3] in which an inhibitory functional group is
ingeniously designed on the basis of knowledge of mechanism
and embedded into an appropriate scaffold, such as a native
enzyme substrate. Even though this approach represents
a strategy with a high cost–performance ratio to obtain an
initial hit(s), the primary design of such an inhibitor is rarely
potent enough, particularly against an enzyme family that
catalyzes various substrates or consists of multiple isoforms.
In any case, in order to improve the potency of the initial
hit(s) further elaboration of its structure is generally con-
ducted by classical medicinal chemistry.
One example of mechanism-based designed inhibitors
against yeast sirtuins is derived from a substrate peptide, H2N-
KSTGG-KAc-APRKQ-OH, in which the e-N-acetyl group on
the lysine residue (KAc) was replaced with e-N-trifluoroacetyl
group (KTfa).[4] Sirtuin belongs to a family of deacetylases,
homologs of which are widespread in prokaryotes and
eukaryotes, and deacetylates the e-N-acetyl group on KAc in
various cellular substrates in the presence of nicotinamide
adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) as a cosubstrate. Mechanisti-
cally, the carbonyl oxygen of the e-N-acetyl group first attacks
the C1’ of the N-ribose in NAD+ to form an O-alkylamidate
intermediate upon the release of a nicotinamide group, and
following several reaction steps give the free e-amino-K
residue and 2’-O-acetyl-ADP-ribose (Scheme 1a).[5,6] The
replacement of KAc with KTfa in the peptide marginally
increases its affinity to yeast sirtuins, but reduces the rate of
the formation of the O-alkylamidate intermediate by nearly
six orders of magnitude, thus resulting in its inhibitory
behavior (Scheme 1b).[4,7,8] Various other mechanism-based
inhibitors against sirtuins, such as e-N-thioacetyl-K (KTac
)
containing peptides,[4,9] have been reported, however, none of
them showed spectacular inhibitory activities; for example,
IC50 values of KTfa and KTac peptides were 61 mm and 1 mm,
respectively.
Because of a biological importance of mammalian sirtuins
(SIRTs) that are involved in the regulation of diverse cellular
functions, it is of great interest to devise more potent
inhibitors against SIRTs than the present examples. In this
study, we chose human SIRT2, which is known to deacetylate
KAc residues in a-tubulin[10] and histone H4K16,[11] thereby
regulate cell-cycle progression. Since there are three isoforms
(SIRT1–3) of class I SIRTs[12] and each SIRT plays distinct
biological roles, we were interested in devising not only
a SIRT-selective but also an isoform-selective inhibitor as an
epigenetic probe and a potential therapeutic agent. We herein
report a new methodology to construct a library of non-
standard macrocyclic peptides that contain a KTfa residue in
the middle of the sequence by using a custom-made trans-
lation apparatus that enables genetic code reprogramming,
and rapidly select potent inhibitors by using an in vitro display
format. The nonstandard macrocyclic peptides that were
identified exhibit a high inhibitory potency against SIRT2
with Kd (and IC50) values in the low (single digit) nanomolar
region as well as a remarkable isoform selectivity.
Genetic code reprogramming is a new means to riboso-
mally express various nonstandard peptides with desired
structural diversities, that is executed by the reassignment of
codons from proteinogenic amino acids to nonproteinogenic
or artificial amino acids.[13–15] To facilitate genetic code
reprogramming, we have devised a custom-made cell-free
translation system integrated with the flexizyme (flexible
tRNA acylation ribozyme) technology, referred to as FIT
(flexible in vitro translation) system.[16] In the FIT system,
arbitrary proteinogenic amino acids are omitted from the
translation components to create vacant codons, and tRNAs
that read the vacant codons are charged with nonproteino-
genic amino acids by flexizyme; thus nonproteinogenic amino
[*] J. Morimoto, Dr. Y. Hayashi, Prof. H. Suga
Department of Chemistry, School of Science
The University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, 113-0033 (Japan)
E-mail: hsuga@chem.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
J. Morimoto
Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology
School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, 113-8656 (Japan)
[**] We thank Drs. H. Murakami, T. Katoh, and Y. Goto for discussions
on the methodology of the RaPID system, and Drs. M. Yoshida and
A. Ito for discussions on in vitro sirtuin assays. We also thank Dr.
Goshima for a gift of a human genome entry clone used for the
SIRT2 expression. This work was supported by a Grants-in-Aid of the
Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS), the Specially
Promoted Research (21000005), the Industrial Science and Tech-
nology Program in the New Energy and Industrial Technology
Development Organization (NEDO) to H.S., and a Grants-in-Aid for
JSPS Fellows (21-9079) to J.M.
Supporting information for this article (including experimental
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 3423 –3427
ꢀ 2012 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
3423