Inactivation of APC is a strongly predisposing event in the development of colorectal cancer1,2, prompting us to search for vulnerabilities specific to cells that have lost APC function. Signalling through the mTOR pathway is known to be required for epithelial cell proliferation and tumour growth3-5 and the current paradigm suggests that a critical function of mTOR activity is to upregulate translational initiation through phosphorylation of 4EBP16,7. This model predicts that the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin, which does not efficiently inhibit 4EBP18, would be ineffective in limiting cancer progression in APC deficient lesions. Here we show that mTORC1 activity is absolutely required for the proliferation of APC deficient (but not wild type) enterocytes, revealing an unexpected opportunity for therapeutic intervention. Although APC deficient cells show the expected increases in protein synthesis, our studies reveals that it is translation elongation, and not initiation, which is the rate-limiting component. Mechanistically, mTORC1 mediated inhibition of eEF2 kinase is required for the proliferation of APC deficient cells. Importantly, treatment of established APC deficient adenomas with rapamycin (which can target eEF2 through the mTORC1 – S6K – eEF2K axis) causes tumour cells to undergo growth arrest and differentiation. Taken together our data suggest that inhibition of translation elongation using existing, clinically approved drugs such as the Rapalogs, would provide clear therapeutic benefit for patients at high-risk of developing colorectal cancer.

A novel mechanism for antagonism of the human chemokine receptors CCR4 and CCR5 has been discovered with a series of small-molecule compounds that seems to interact with an allosteric, intracellular site on the receptor. The existence of this site is supported by a series of observations: 1) intracellular access of these antagonists is required for their activity; 2) specific, saturable binding of a radiolabeled antagonist requires the presence of CCR4; and 3) through engineering receptor chimeras by reciprocal transfer of C-terminal domains between CCR4 and CCR5, compound binding and the selective structure-activity relationships for antagonism of these receptors seem to be associated with the integrity of that intracellular region. Published antagonists from other chemical series do not seem to bind to the novel site, and their interaction with either CCR4 or CCR5 is not affected by alteration of the Cterminal domain. The precise location of the proposed binding site remains to be determined, but the known close association of the C-terminal domain, including helix 8, as a proposed intracellular region that interacts with transduction proteins (e.g., G proteins and ␤-arrestin) suggests that this could be a generic allosteric site for chemokine receptors and perhaps more broadly for class A G protein-coupled receptors. The existence of such a site that can be targeted for drug discovery has implications for screening assays for receptor antagonists, which would need, therefore, to consider compound properties for access to this intracellular site.The superfamily of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) represents a productive area for drug discovery. Worldwide sales of drugs that act via GPCRs were estimated in 2004 to be in excess of $120 billion/year (Business Insights Research, 2005). In that same year, chemical programs to target GPCRs accounted for 40% of the portfolio of the pharmaceutical industry, with nearly 40% of these in clinical development (Business Insights Research, 2005).Much of the progress in discovery of small-molecule ligands (i.e., Ͻ500 mol. wt.) for GPCRs comes from improvements in technologies to screen large numbers of compounds, where many campaigns will use functional assays with cell lines genetically engineered to express high amounts of the GPCR of interest, often coexpressed with a genetically modified G protein to improve signaling. This cell-based screening approach is supported by an understanding that the natural agonists for GPCRs interact with extracellular domains of the receptor that form a binding pocket, in analogy with the retinal-binding site of rhodopsin, and from mutagenesis studies of cloned GPCRs, which suggest that antagonists bind competitively at either the orthosteric or a syntopic site within the exofacial core of the transmembrane domains (Kristiansen, 2004). Structural modeling of GPCRs, based on homology with the resolved crystal structures of rhodopsin (Palczewski et al., 2000;Schertler, 2005), also is used to lead rational drug design, and it is ce...

The requirement for next-generation antimalarials to be both curative and transmission-blocking necessitates the identification of previously undiscovered druggable molecular pathways. We identified a selective inhibitor of the Plasmodium falciparum protein kinase PfCLK3, which we used in combination with chemogenetics to validate PfCLK3 as a drug target acting at multiple parasite life stages. Consistent with a role for PfCLK3 in RNA splicing, inhibition resulted in the down-regulation of more than 400 essential parasite genes. Inhibition of PfCLK3 mediated rapid killing of asexual liver- and blood-stage P. falciparum and blockade of gametocyte development, thereby preventing transmission, and also showed parasiticidal activity against P. berghei and P. knowlesi. Hence, our data establish PfCLK3 as a target for drugs, with the potential to offer a cure—to be prophylactic and transmission blocking in malaria.

No abstract