A Suite of "Minimalist" Photo-Crosslinkers for Live-Cell Imaging and Chemical Proteomics: Case Study with BRD4 Inhibitors

Fishing for Drug Targets: A Focus on Diazirine Photoaffinity Probe Synthesis

Target identification is a high-priority, albeit challenging, aspect of drug discovery. Diazirine-based photoaffinity probes (PAPs) can facilitate the process by covalently capturing transient molecular interactions. This can help identify target proteins and map the ligand's interactome. Diazirine probes have even been incorporated by cellular machinery into proteins. Embarking on the synthesis of customized PAPs, containing either an aliphatic or trifluoromethyl phenyl diazirine, can be a considerable endeavor, particularly for medicinal chemists and chemical biologists new to the field. This review takes a synthetic focus, aiming to summarize available routes, propose new avenues, and illuminate recent advances in diazirine synthesis. Select examples of diazirine photoaffinity labeling applications have been included throughout to provide instructive definition of the advantages and limitations of the technology while simultaneously highlighting how these reagents can be applied in a practical sense.

A Vinyl Sulfone-Based Fluorogenic Probe Capable of Selective Labeling of PHGDH in Live Mammalian Cells

Chemical probes are powerful tools for interrogating small molecule-target interactions. With additional fluorescence Turn-ON functionality, such probes might enable direct measurements of target engagement in live mammalian cells. DNS-pE (and its terminal alkyne-containing version DNS-pE2) is the first small molecule that can selectively label endogenous 3-phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase (PHGDH) from various mammalian cells. Endowed with an electrophilic vinyl sulfone moiety that possesses fluorescence-quenching properties, DNS-pE/DNS-pE2 became highly fluorescent only upon irreversible covalent modification of PHGDH. With an inhibitory property (in vitro K_i =7.4 μm) comparable to that of known PHGDH inhibitors, our probes thus offer a promising approach to simultaneously image endogenous PHGDH activities and study its target engagement in live-cell settings.

A chemoselective cleavable fluorescence turn-ON linker for proteomic studies

We have developed a trifunctional cleavable fluorescence turn-ON linker for chemoproteomic applications.