Preparation of Biphenyl-Conjugated Bromotyrosine for Inhibition of PD-1/PD-L1 Immune Checkpoint Interactions.
Int J Mol Sci 2020;
21:ijms21103639. [PMID:
32455628 PMCID:
PMC7279355 DOI:
10.3390/ijms21103639]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2020] [Revised: 05/14/2020] [Accepted: 05/17/2020] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
Cancer immunotherapy has been revolutionized by the development of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that inhibit interactions between immune checkpoint molecules, such as programmed cell-death 1 (PD-1), and its ligand PD-L1. However, mAb-based drugs have some drawbacks, including poor tumor penetration and high production costs, which could potentially be overcome by small molecule drugs. BMS-8, one of the potent small molecule drugs, induces homodimerization of PD-L1, thereby inhibiting its binding to PD-1. Our assay system revealed that BMS-8 inhibited the PD-1/PD-L1 interaction with IC50 of 7.2 μM. To improve the IC50 value, we designed and synthesized a small molecule based on the molecular structure of BMS-8 by in silico simulation. As a result, we successfully prepared a biphenyl-conjugated bromotyrosine (X) with IC50 of 1.5 μM, which was about five times improved from BMS-8. We further prepared amino acid conjugates of X (amino-X), to elucidate a correlation between the docking modes of the amino-Xs and IC50 values. The results suggested that the displacement of amino-Xs from the BMS-8 in the pocket of PD-L1 homodimer correlated with IC50 values. This observation provides us a further insight how to derivatize X for better inhibitory effect.
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