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Meng J, Lai MT, Munshi V, Grobler J, McCauley J, Zuck P, Johnson EN, Uebele VN, Hermes JD, Adam GC. Screening of HIV-1 Protease Using a Combination of an Ultra-High-Throughput Fluorescent-Based Assay and RapidFire Mass Spectrometry. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2015; 20:606-15. [PMID: 25681434 DOI: 10.1177/1087057115570838] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/29/2014] [Accepted: 01/12/2015] [Indexed: 12/19/2022]
Abstract
HIV-1 protease (PR) represents one of the primary targets for developing antiviral agents for the treatment of HIV-infected patients. To identify novel PR inhibitors, a label-free, high-throughput mass spectrometry (HTMS) assay was developed using the RapidFire platform and applied as an orthogonal assay to confirm hits identified in a fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based primary screen of > 1 million compounds. For substrate selection, a panel of peptide substrates derived from natural processing sites for PR was evaluated on the RapidFire platform. As a result, KVSLNFPIL, a new substrate measured to have a ~ 20- and 60-fold improvement in k cat/K m over the frequently used sequences SQNYPIVQ and SQNYPIV, respectively, was identified for the HTMS screen. About 17% of hits from the FRET-based primary screen were confirmed in the HTMS confirmatory assay including all 304 known PR inhibitors in the set, demonstrating that the HTMS assay is effective at triaging false-positives while capturing true hits. Hence, with a sampling rate of ~7 s per well, the RapidFire HTMS assay enables the high-throughput evaluation of peptide substrates and functions as an efficient tool for hits triage in the discovery of novel PR inhibitors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juncai Meng
- Screening and Protein Sciences, Merck Research Labs, North Wales, PA, USA
| | - Ming-Tain Lai
- Department of Infectious Disease, Merck Research Labs, West Point, PA, USA
| | - Vandna Munshi
- Department of Infectious Disease, Merck Research Labs, West Point, PA, USA
| | - Jay Grobler
- Department of Infectious Disease, Merck Research Labs, West Point, PA, USA
| | - John McCauley
- Medicinal Chemistry, Merck Research Labs, West Point, PA, USA
| | - Paul Zuck
- Screening and Protein Sciences, Merck Research Labs, North Wales, PA, USA
| | - Eric N Johnson
- Screening and Protein Sciences, Merck Research Labs, North Wales, PA, USA Wuxi Apptech
| | - Victor N Uebele
- Screening and Protein Sciences, Merck Research Labs, North Wales, PA, USA
| | - Jeffrey D Hermes
- Screening and Protein Sciences, Merck Research Labs, North Wales, PA, USA
| | - Gregory C Adam
- Screening and Protein Sciences, Merck Research Labs, North Wales, PA, USA
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