Letter
Synthesis and Evaluation of Ginkgolic Acid Derivatives as
SUMOylation Inhibitors
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ABSTRACT: SUMOylation has emerged as an important post-
translational modification that has been shown to modulate protein
activity associated with various signaling pathways, and con-
sequently, it has emerged as an important therapeutic target. While
several natural products have been shown to inhibit enzymes
involved in the SUMOylation process, there has been little
progress toward the development of more selective and potent
SUMOylation inhibitors. Ginkgolic acid was one of the first natural
products discovered to inhibit the SUMO E1 enzyme. Despite its
use to mechanistically investigate the SUMOylation process,
ginkgolic acid also modulates other pathways as well. In this Letter, preliminary structure−activity relationships for ginkgolic
acid as a SUMOylation inhibitor are presented.
KEYWORDS: SUMO, SAE inhibitors, cancer, autophagy, apoptosis
ost-translational modifications are critical to cellular
processes that regulate protein function and, to date,
ubiquitously expressed, SUMO4 mRNA is only present in the
kidneys, spleen, and lymph nodes.2 While there are significant
differences in their sequence homology, they all exhibit a
similar three-dimensional structure.
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more than 450 unique modifications have been discovered.1
SUMOylation, the post-translational conjugation of the small
ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) to a protein, is an emerging
area of study due to the wide array of cellular processes that it
controls.2 Protein SUMOylation was first identified in 19963
and has been shown to be associated with DNA damage repair,
immunological response, protein stability, nuclear-cytosolic
transport, cell cycle progression, and apoptosis to name a few.4
Thus, it is not surprising that dysregulation of SUMOylation is
associated with many forms of cancer and neurodegenerative
disorders.5
The SUMOylation pathway is upregulated in several cancers
and has emerged as a potential target for the development of
small molecule inhibitors.6 In fact, several natural product
inhibitors of SUMOylation have been identified including
ginkgolic acid (1) and its structural analogue, anacardic acid
(2).9,10 While there are many structurally related ginkgolic
acids, the C15:1 derivative 1 and the fully saturated analogue 2
were the analogues first reported as SUMOylation inhibitors.
Ginkgolic acid exhibits anticancer activity and inhibits the
migration of several different cancer cell lines.11−13 RAC1 and
NEMO are proteins that control cellular migration, and
because SUMOylation modulates both of these proteins, it is
not surprising that SUMOylation inhibitors manifest anti-
metastatic activity.14,15 In fact, recent studies have demon-
strated that the antimigratory and anticancer activities
manifested by ginkgolic acid are linked to inhibition of
RAC1 and NEMO SUMOylation.16,17
The SUMOylation pathway is mechanistically very similar to
the process of ubiquitinylation. Initially, the E1 enzyme forms a
thioester bond with the C-terminus of the SUMO peptide.
Next, the activated SUMO is transferred to the E2 enzyme,
which is responsible for conjugation and transesterification,
resulting in a new thioester bond. The E3 ligases can then
associate with the loaded E2 enzyme, which catalyze the
transfer of SUMO to the ε-amino group on a specific lysine
within the substrate.6 This enzymatic pathway is also reversible
as sentrin specific proteases (SENPs) are responsible for
cleaving the bond between the substrate and SUMO (Figure
1).7
There are four SUMO isoforms: SUMO1−SUMO4.
SUMO2, and SUMO3 share 97% sequence homology and
are often referred to as SUMO2/3, as they have not yet been
functionally distinguished.8 Their sequence is only 50% similar
to that of SUMO1, whereas SUMO4 is the least similar and
the least studied of the isoforms. While SUMO 1−3 are
Despite the increased attention that SUMOylation has
received in recent years and ginkgolic acid’s widespread use as
Received: June 23, 2020
Accepted: September 24, 2020
Published: September 24, 2020
© XXXX American Chemical Society
ACS Med. Chem. Lett. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
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