Oligomeric interfaces as a tool in drug discovery: Specific interference with activity of malate dehydrogenase of Plasmodium falciparum in vitro

Autor(es)

Lunev, Sergey ^[1] ; Butzloff, Sabine ^[2] ; Romero, Atilio R. ^[1] ; Linzke, Marleen ^[3] ; Batista, Fernando A. ^[1] ; Meissner, Kamila A. ^[3] ; Mueller, Ingrid B. ^[2] ; Adawy, Alaa ^[1] ; Wrenger, Carsten ^[3] ; Groves, Matthew R. ^[1]

Afiliação do(s) autor(es)

^[1] Univ Groningen, Dept Pharm, Drug Design XB20, Struct Biol Unit, Groningen - Netherlands

^[2] Bernhard Nocht Inst Trop Med, Hamburg - Germany

^[3] Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Biomed Sci, Dept Parasitol, Unit Drug Discovery, Sao Paulo - Brazil

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: PLoS One; v. 13, n. 4 APR 25 2018.
• Citações Web of Science: 3

Resumo

Malaria remains a major threat to human health, as strains resistant to current therapeutics are discovered. Efforts in finding new drug targets are hampered by the lack of sufficiently specific tools to provide target validation prior to initiating expensive drug discovery projects. Thus, new approaches that can rapidly enable drug target validation are of significant interest. In this manuscript we present the crystal structure of malate dehydrogenase from Plasmodium falciparum (PfMDH) at 2.4 angstrom resolution and structure-based mutagenic experiments interfering with the inter-oligomeric interactions of the enzyme. We report decreased thermal stability, significantly decreased specific activity and kinetic parameters of PfMDH mutants upon mutagenic disruption of either oligomeric interface. In contrast, stabilization of one of the interfaces resulted in increased thermal stability, increased substrate/ cofactor affinity and hyperactivity of the enzyme towards malate production at sub-millimolar substrate concentrations. Furthermore, the presented data show that our designed PfMDH mutant could be used as specific inhibitor of the wild type PfMDH activity, as mutated PfMDH copies were shown to be able to self-incorporate into the native assembly upon introduction in vitro, yielding deactivated mutant: wild-type species. These data provide an insight into the role of oligomeric assembly in regulation of PfMDH activity and reveal that recombinant mutants could be used as probe tool for specific modification of the wild type PfMDH activity, thus offering the potential to validate its druggability in vivo without recourse to complex genetics or initial tool compounds. Such tool compounds often lack specificity between host or pathogen proteins (or are toxic in in vivo trials) and result in difficulties in assessing cause and effect D particularly in cases when the enzymes of interest possess close homologs within the human host. Furthermore, our oligomeric interference approach could be used in the future in order to assess druggability of other challenging human pathogen drug targets. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 15/26722-8 - Drug discovery contra doenças infecciosas humanos
• Beneficiário: Carsten Wrenger
• Linha de fomento: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Temático
• Processo FAPESP: 16/24790-9 - Validação da importância de PfEXP1/GST2 para defesa contra xenobióticos em modelos de deficiência de glicose-6-fosfato desidrogenase infectados com Plasmodium Falciparum
• Beneficiário: Kamila Anna Meissner
• Linha de fomento: Bolsas no Brasil - Pós-Doutorado
• Processo FAPESP: 13/10288-1 - Análise da biogênese de organelas em Plasmodium falciparum por visualização celular em tempo real
• Beneficiário: Carsten Wrenger
• Linha de fomento: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Regular
• Processo FAPESP: 12/12807-3 - Análise do estado redox e seu efeito sobre a proliferação de Plasmodium falciparum em eritrócitos geneticamente diferentes
• Beneficiário: Kamila Anna Meissner
• Linha de fomento: Bolsas no Brasil - Doutorado
• Processo FAPESP: 14/23330-9 - Análise morfológica da formação de apicoplasto em Plasmodium falciparum
• Beneficiário: Marleen Linzke
• Linha de fomento: Bolsas no Brasil - Doutorado